


Perception

by ameliacareful



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cursed!Sam, Dean 'haunts' Sam, Everyone misses Cas, Gen, It's Winchesters so angst is the air they breath, Looking for a Hand of God, Mental Health Issues, Okay there's usually angst, Season 11, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 21,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7089157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam is cursed he can no longer perceive Dean.  Not knowing he searches for a Dean who is actually with him.  Dean is left unable to do anything but watch Sam search.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            Dean was watching porn while Sam sat trying to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics in a motel room in Indiana. The motel room was trying to be midcentury modern but it felt more like the Flintstones. The pillows were faux leopard print and the drapes were zebra striped. The art was garage sale cheap. The television was just old.

Dean needed new socks. He bought them in packs of six from big box stores and they wore out fast. Sam was staring at the callus on Dean’s big toe showing through the hole in his sock without really seeing it, thinking about determinatives in hieratic script. Dean was ignoring him because he knew Sam wasn’t really looking at him.

            They’d driven to New Hampshire to buy a collection of papers that might have included a scroll that might have been a Hand of God—something handled by Moses. Sam was trying to translate it now. First step was trying to get the thing into something he could read. Sam was not very good at Egyptian. Hieratic symbols stood for sounds, not words, and given enough time he could laboriously translate them into something he could sort of sound out. (Egyptian hieratic script didn’t have vowels.) He couldn’t necessarily make sense of them very well because frigging Ancient Egyptian.

            He whispered to himself, almost soundlessly, “ _Mish_.”

            He missed Cas. Cas spoke several varieties of Egyptian and the only reason that Sam had a chance at sounding it out was that Cas had helped him with Egyptian before. Thinking about Cas was painful. If his own experience was anything to go by, Lucifer was not only running Cas’ body, he was in Cas’ mind any time he wanted to be.

            Don’t dwell.

            The next symbol was the _determinant_ for ‘man’ which meant that the last three? Four? Two? symbols had been sounds. Damn the Egyptians. He wrote the sounds out carefully and wished he was in the bunker. There were dictionaries there.

            If Cas were here he’d ask him about God and the Egyptians. There was this one pharaoh, Ahkenaten (King Tut’s father-in-law) who had believed there was only one God and had banned the worship of all other gods. Had Ahkenaten’s one god been Castiel’s Father? Or just another in the pantheon of Egyptian Gods?

            It was about two am when Sam had the page assembled and transliterated. It was some kind of magic. According to Cas, the Egyptians were remarkably blasé about magic. It wasn’t exactly everyday; not like, say, in Harry Potter. More like seeing a deer or a crane or a coyote was for most people today. Common for some of us, pretty uncommon for others.

            Sam read the whole page to himself, sub-vocalizing so as not to wake Dean. The lights were off in the room. He shucked his jeans and shirt by the light of his laptop screen, closed it and crawled into bed.

#

            He woke up thinking about phonemes. He stared at the ceiling for a moment thinking about Egyptian phrases and then thought about coffee. Dean wasn’t in the room which meant coffee might be on its way. (Dean didn’t sleep a lot on the road—usually about four or five hours.)

            He rolled out of bed and planted his feet on the carpet. He glanced out the window and saw the Impala.

            Dean wasn’t back when he got out of the shower.

            Dean’s stuff was still there. He got dressed and called him. Dean’s phone rang twice and then… Sam was standing there with his phone in his hand. It was weird. He tried again. A little stutter, almost like when he was possessed by Gadreel except this time before he could even think about it, something grabbed him.

            Poltergeist or ghost he didn’t know. He twisted out of the grasp and lunged at the duffel bag full of weapons. He tried to open it and the invisible thing slammed him— and then he was lying on the floor, face against the carpet. He didn’t feel as if he’d been knocked out.

            What the fuck?

            It hadn’t ever gotten colder in the room so not a ghost or a poltergeist. He didn’t smell sulfur. Where the hell was Dean? He sat up and looked. The room was empty, nothing but beds and their stuff. He reached in the duffel and grabbed holy water. He watched the room for a moment, then got to his feet.

            Still nothing.

            After a moment he got his 9mm from the bedside table. He picked up his boots still sitting beside his bed and backed out the door.

            He took a couple of deep breaths. He exhaled and couldn’t see it. No cold spots. It could shove him around. The concrete walkway outside the hotel room was chilly through his socks (not ghost chilly, just springtime) so he put his boots on. They were on a busy highway. Cars rushed by. Where the hell was Dean with coffee? There wasn’t any place around to walk to. They were close to a highway and there were no sidewalks, just car lots and a place that sold boats and a cabinet shop. He rested his hand on the roof of the Impala, listening to the ordinary sound of cars on the road. He tried calling Dean again and this time it went to voicemail.

            “Dean, where the hell are you? Something is at the motel room, like a poltergeist or something—”

            Something grabbed him again and spun him around. He punched at nothing and felt his fist connect.

            He stood breathing hard.

            The maid stood staring at him from where she was loading her cart. He needed to find Dean. He opened the driver’s side door of the Impala and something grabbed at him again. He had his gun out, aimed at air, and he spat out, “Get away from my brother’s car.”

            He didn’t think the gun would do any good but he kept it out while he slid into the driver’s seat. He leaned down to hotwire the Impala. Dean would be pissed but he’d be damned if he was going back in the motel room again.

            He glanced up and the keys were on the seat next to him.

            Dean never left the keys in the car.

            Something was fucking off.

#


	2. Chapter 2

            Dean needed coffee. And maybe a lobotomy.

            No, Sam needed the lobotomy. His brother’s head was broken. Again. It was scaring the ever loving shit out of him. Sam had gotten out of bed while Dean was getting dressed after his shower.

            “How late were you up?” Dean asked.

            Sam didn’t answer, looking distracted. He picked up the phone and dialed and at the moment Dean’s phone rang so Dean picked it up and it was Sam.

            “What?” Dean said without bothering to answer. When Sam ignored him for no reason he could quite explain, Dean humored him and took the call. “What?” he said into the phone.

            Sam didn’t say anything. He could hear Sam breathing into the phone and could see him standing there. “Sam,” he said, not to the phone, “What are you doing?”

            Sam was doing Wax Museum Sam.

            He shut off the phone and barked, “SAM!”

            Sam frowned and hit the contact on his phone again. Dean’s phone rang again.

            Dean took the call again, frowning, and Sam went utterly still.

            Dean cut the call, dropped his phone on the bed and grabbed his brother by his biceps.

            Sam twisted out of his grasp and lunged at the weapons bag.

            Dean pinned him and Sam went limp, cheek against the dirty carpet. Dean craned to look at him. Sam’s eyes were open there was just…nobody home. His face was lax against the carpet. Dean shook him. “C’mon buddy. Don’t do this.” It was too creepy. Dean sat back.

            Sam blinked, drew a deep breath. Dean watched him assess.

            “What the fuck,” Dean said.

            Sam sat up, his eyes going around the room, sweeping through Dean as if he wasn’t even there.

            Sam had cracked. Only explanation. Or a hex bag. Who could have planted a hex bag while they were sleeping? Not a goddamn chance. _Sam had seemed good_. He would have noticed if things were going south, wouldn’t he? Sam had been more easy than he’d been in years. He slept, he ate. He was a rock.

            He was on his feet, collecting his gun and his boots, going outside. Dean followed him. He didn’t act like someone in the middle of a breakdown. He wasn't jittery or sweaty. He was alert, sure. He stood for a minute, taking in the parking lot, the Impala, checking up and down the street. Frowning. _He’s looking for me,_ Dean thought. Exactly what Dean would be doing if he didn’t know where Sam was.

            Sam put on his boots and headed for the Impala. He stopped by the driver’s side of the Impala, stood for a moment. He pulled out his phone again and Dean didn’t even bother to answer it. It rang, loud in the parking lot. The maid was loading her cart at the utility closet, she glanced up at them.

            “Dean, where the hell are you?” Sam said. “Something is at the motel room, like a poltergeist or something—”

            Dean grabbed Sam and spun him around, “I’M RIGHT HERE!”

            He was unprepared for Sam to swing because honestly, Sam hadn’t swung on him in years. Lucky, his instinct was still to dodge because if Sam had connected a solid blow it would have probably knocked him into August. As it was it dumped him on his ass.

            Sam loomed above him, staring into the empty air, fist cocked, breathing hard.

            The maid was full out staring.

            “It’s okay,” Dean said. “We’re going to the drug store to refill his meds.”

            She didn’t look reassured.

            Sam opened the car door.

            Dean got up and gently took Sam’s arm.

            Sam pulled a gun on him and said to a space at about his right ear, “Get away from my brother’s car.”

            Dean held up his hands. O-kay.

            After a moment, Sam lay down on the seat, reaching under the dash. Oh no, he was not going to hotwire Baby. Dean yanked open the passenger side door and dropped the keys on the seat. Sam had a hard time reaching under the dash, it was awkward for someone with shoulders as wide as a fridge. Sam shifted and saw the keys on the seat. He stopped.

            “Gift horse, mouth,” Dean said.

            After a minute, Sam snatched the keys off the seat and pulled himself out of the car. He looked around the parking lot, suspicious as hell. Then he got in the car. Dean got in the passenger seat.

            “Pretty sure you’re not going to let me drive,” Dean said.

            Sam ignored him.

            “What the fuck?” Dean said and thought he was saying that altogether too often. “Sam? Look at me. Right here.” He leaned over and waved his fingers in front of Sam’s eyes. No reaction. He put a tape in, turned it up. “Point of Know Return” by Kansas blared out so loud Dean jumped. Sam didn’t appear to hear it. He pulled out onto the highway. Dean ejected the tape. “So what is this?” Dean asked. “You were fine yesterday, you’re crazy today. Gabriel’s dead so it isn’t the mystery spot all over again. Another trickster? A curse? A witch?” Money was on a witch. When weird shit happened it was usually a witch.

            Sam was watching the edge of the road as he drove—looking, Dean realized, for him.

            They went about a mile and then Sam turned the car around and went back the other way. There was a doughnut shop and Sam pulled in. Dean followed him and stood at the door while Sam talked to the girl at the counter asked if anyone came in looking like Dean and bought coffee.

            The girl looked at Dean, obviously confused. Dean shrugged. Sam glanced over and looked through him.

            “And bought coffee?” the girl said. “No.”

            Sam thanked her and ran his hands through his hair.

            They went back to the motel and Dean did not follow Sam to the front desk. He just couldn’t. It would only fuck things up. He sat at the car at the police station, watched Sam go in dressed in his fed suit. Dean wanted to stay at the motel room and start doing researching on the laptop on his own but he was afraid Sam would cut and run or something.

            Sam took the room apart, looking for clues. That, at least, was convenient. Sam had always been a bit detail oriented but watching him take a room apart this time was amazing. He went way overboard, slit the mattresses carefully along a seam and checked inside them with a flashlight. He took apart the air conditioner. The trap under the sink. And of course, took apart his phone. Dean was certain when Sam was finished that there was no hex bag. He was also pretty sure that the cleaning crew was not doing a great job flipping the mattresses or vacuuming under the beds, either.

            He was starving and Sam was too intensely preoccupied to eat so he called a local joint ordered a pizza, half meat lovers and half veggie. Sam didn’t seem to hear.

            Sam hunkered down over his laptop.

            Dean kept one eye on the time and when pizza was almost due he went outside. When the guy pulled up he tipped him and took the pizza back inside. “Ya gotta eat,” he said. “Let’s see if you notice this at some point.” He plunked the box down next to Sam, grabbed a slice and went out to the Impala and got two beers out of the cooler. They were barely cold. He opened them both. Sam was already staring at the pizza box when he went in.

            Maybe because he’d gone outside. He put a beer down next to the box and went back outside, counted to ten and went back inside.

            Sam was on the laptop, frantic. It took a moment for Dean to figure out what Sam was going, he was trying to track Dean’s GPS.

            Dean pulled out his phone and turned on GPS shit so Sam could find him. “I’m right here,” he said.

            He could tell when Sam got the trace. He could tell when Sam started to narrow it down. He went outside and put his phone between his feet and waited. No way Sam could miss the phone. No way Sam could grab the phone without running into him.

            It was like waiting for a cuckoo clock to hit the hour. Sam could narrow GPS down to about 18 feet. 6 feet if conditions were right. After a few moments, Sam popped out of the motel room, full Wildman mode. He looked around, saw the phone. He went through all of those expressions that people are supposed to go through when someone dies—anger, denial, bargaining, whatever the hell they all were—in like two seconds, and then lunged for Dean’s phone.

            When he touched Dean’s leg he went empty. Not unconscious. Just empty. He stayed on his knees with his hand on the phone and his lean, muscly Sam forearm brushing Dean’s jeans. Dean squatted down and looked at Sam’s face. Eyes open, lights were even on, but nobody was home. He grabbed Sam’s arm and pulled, trying to straighten him up.

            Sam didn’t fight. He just didn’t help. Dean could move his arm but Sam was, as everybody not so helpfully commented, big. Dean shook his arm. Nothing. “Sam, look at me. Look at me. It’s Dean. Come on.” He grabbed Sam’s jaw, tilted his face up. “Sammy.”

            Maybe the hex bag was on Sam? He looked around, aware of what this looked like, then patted his brother down. Nothing.

            Sam breathed.

            Dean sighed and picked up his phone and stepped away.

            For a moment Sam just knelt then he breathed out and although he didn’t move, his eyes darted around. He straightened and then stood up, took stock. It was like before Cas took Lucifer away. Sam was scared. He ran one big hand through his hair.

            Dean shut off all his GPS stuff watching him. Otherwise it was going to drive Sam crazy.


	3. Chapter 3

            Sam stayed in town, searching. He got a couple of false leads and tracked them down ruthlessly. He got some real leads, too, because Dean was, of course, actually there.

            He was pretty sure he knew everything a person could know about someone when it came to Sam but it turned out that when Sam was by himself he was different. Sam was always neat. When Dean ‘wasn’t around’ he was obsessively so. Who the hell made their own bed in a hotel? He put his boots the same place every night. He left no clothes out. He took off his dirty clothes and folded them (no joke). As soon as he finished showering, he hung his towel neatly, came out naked, and got dressed. Every other day he ran. He didn’t watch TV. He exercised (he’d always done that, no one looked that way without it) but now he did it precisely. On the days he didn’t run he had some sort of series he did—push-ups, planks, stomach crunches.

            Sam didn’t make any noise.

            Dean knew he was not a quiet person. He played music. He liked a television on in the background. Sometimes he talked to himself. Sometimes he sang to himself. Sam not only didn’t talk to himself, he seemed quieter than he was normally. He didn’t count while he exercised. He didn’t turn on the television.

            He walked around Dean’s boots without seeing them. Any evidence that he was there—a damp towel or toothbrush—Sam failed to notice.

            Dean took to talking to him, sort of the way you’d talk to a dog. Or maybe a plant. He’d wake up to Sam working out.

            _“Nice form on those sit-ups, Richard Simmons. You make me tired just watching you. This is some sort of weird if-I-do-something-right-everything-will-be-fine thing, isn’t it. If you were an eighth grade girl you’d be anorexic, dude. Or you’d be drawing horses. Unicorns. Anorexic unicorns.”_

            Sam would continue, his face hidden behind his hair, doing push-ups like a piston.

            After a week, Sam did something they hadn’t done in years. Like their dad, he put every piece of information he had on the wall and when he wasn’t on the laptop, he stared at it. He cleaned guns looking at a map of the area, a printout of Dean’s cell phone record, a list of credit card charges, a newspaper article about a girl who disappeared in 1978, and index cards with notes about abductions, possession, hitchhikers, kidnappers, and a Wired magazine article he’d printed out about a guy who tried to disappear. It was creepy as fuck, both because of the serial killer vibe Sam had going and because of the way it made Dean think of their dad.

            Day five he added a couple of stills from a bar surveillance camera. Dean had hustled pool one night to make some cash because he was afraid to use a credit card. It would leave a trace that Sam would find. Sam would then go bonkers trying to figure out why Dean was in town. But Sam had found him anyway. There he was taking some guy for a couple of hundred in grainy black and white. It wasn’t his best look but at least the insurance agent he’d relieved of cash looked even worse.

            There were three bars in walking distance. He waited until Sam settled into an obsessive evening of laptop research, pretty sure he wasn’t going anywhere and Dean walked the two miles to a different dive to drink and think. He didn’t want to take the Impala because then Sam would notice the car gone. God alone knew what he’d do then.

            The guy behind the bar said, “You Dean?” He was a short guy with a receding hairline and hopes of being a mixologist. He kept trying to get people to taste his cocktails. It was not a cocktail kind of bar.

            “Why?” Dean said.

            “Guy was in here yesterday looking for you.”

            “Big guy? Longish hair?” Dean asked. “That’s my brother.” He pulled out his phone and made a show of calling. “Hey Sam,” he said to a dial tone, “I’m in town. I’ll be at the hotel in a couple of hours. Just getting a drink.”

            This wasn’t working. He had to figure something out.

#

            Taking his baby and leaving Sam stranded was harder than he expected. It wasn’t as if Sam would notice him stealing the Impala. In fact, Sam didn’t. When he decided that Sam would have a better chance of figuring out whatever the hell was going on when he had the resources of the bunker (and Dean would too; Dean had been doing as much research as he could and despite Sam’s belief that he couldn’t find anything but porn on the internet, he _could_ use a search engine) he just packed his stuff and walked out the door.

            The Impala was loud. He couldn’t help it, he sat in the driver’s seat waiting for Sam to come out and notice the car was running.

            After a couple of minutes he put her in reverse and left.

            He used a credit card three hours later to fill up and buy food. He figured Sam would have some sort of trace on the cards and would be on his tail immediately but that was the point—a trail of breadcrumbs to home.

            A day later, he stopped and got groceries in Lebanon. (They pretty much had nothing when they left except frozen pizza.) He pulled open the bunker door and as soon as he did he knew the bunker wasn’t empty.

            Sam was there, sitting in the library, laptop open. He was angled half towards the door.

            “Well, I guess it wasn’t like you couldn’t figure it out,” Dean said.

            Sam didn’t look up. Didn’t acknowledge the door or Dean. He was waiting. It was in the set of his shoulders, the way he sat. But for Sam, Dean wasn’t going to get there.

            “Son of a bitch,” Dean said, to no one but himself. He closed the door behind him.

            God he missed Cas. And his brother.

#

            The bunker felt haunted to Sam. He fell asleep on the library table waiting for Dean to show up. He’d told himself to be prepared for anything—but he wasn’t prepared for nothing.

            He laid out his research, staring at it. What did he know?

 

  1. Dean had disappeared. No one appeared to have entered or left the motel room, Dean was just gone. At first his stuff was there, then it was just gone, too.
  2. Weird shit happened in the motel room. Things appeared and disappeared. Pizza showed up. Beer. There was some sort of presence that fucking tackled him. Then it…stayed. He could sort of feel it.
  3. No cold spots. No sulfur. No evidence in the town of any shapeshifters, anything.
  4. Dean had been in town. There was evidence of him everywhere. People saw him. People talked to him. He was even on surveillance. His phone said he was in town and then went off GPS.
  5. Dean had wanted him to come to the bunker. Had lured him here.
  6. He was losing time. Not like the first day when he lost minutes but briefer periods. They were like stutters in the fabric of day—badly stitched together rips. It reminded him of when Gadreel had possessed him and he didn’t know. It was terrifying him.



 

            Other things he knew. Cas was still possessed by Lucifer (saying “I don’t need you anymore” with Cas’ face and the overwhelming understanding that he was going to die at Lucifer’s hands again but this time with no coming back, thank God, one last time of soul-crushing fear and pain…) Amara was still out there. He’d promised Dean he’d take care of Amara and he owed it to Cas to find out if Cas was being tortured. To try and get him out.

            He had four possibilities he was trying to eliminate. One was that Dean was avoiding him for some reason. To protect him, maybe. Maybe it had to do with Amara? But that didn’t explain the weirdness in the motel or the time slips.

            Two was that he was possessed again. He tried every test he could think of. He didn’t feel anything but he hadn’t suspected Gadreel, either.

            Three, he was dead. He’d thought of that M. Night Shyamalan movie, the _I see dead people_ one where Bruce Willis didn’t know he was dead. Maybe he wasn’t crazy, he was a ghost and he wasn’t all there. If so, he hoped Dean got his act together soon and got rid of him. But Dean wasn’t exactly acting like Sam was dead. Dean wasn’t trying to revive him or contacting him on the other side or acting suicidally reckless.   Sam couldn’t imagine Dean just wandering around hustling pool if he was dead—but who knew. He’d never been around when he was dead.

            Fourth possibility? Dean was dead and Sam had slipped a socket. Finally gone off the deep end. Again. That once again he couldn’t tell the difference between psychosis and reality and he was manufacturing a hallucinatory Dean in the world. That one seemed more than a little plausible to him. It explained the time slips, the weirdness, everything. He tried to think of how Dean might have died but there was no hint even in his dreams. His nightmares were pretty much the same as always. The Cage. Lucifer. Dreams of betraying Dean, Dean getting farther and farther away as he tried to get to him, Dean turning out to be Lucifer. Usual stuff. His own personal equivalent of being naked in public or forgetting he had registered for a class and had to take the final exam.

            The fifth possibility was that something else was going on that he hadn’t figured out but since he hadn’t figured it out, he just left that one for now.

            On his desk of research the possibilities were organized each other labeled ‘Ditched’, ‘Possessed’, ‘Sixth Sense’, ‘Crazy’, and ‘?’.

            He carefully listed the supporting evidence and the evidence against in short notes. That took all of an hour. Then he studied the notes. He drank a beer and then another.

            He added another possibility. Amara. That Amara had done something with Dean and that led to a list of things Amara did to people.

 

  * Create a kind of fog-plague that took their minds and killed them.
  * Killed people out right.
  * Suck out people’s souls.
  * Had a strange attraction for Dean.



            None of that actually led him anywhere.

            When Dean had gone demon, he’d left a note to tell Sam to leave him alone. Had Amara sucked out Dean’s soul and this was Dean soulless? That felt like opening a bottomless pit.

            Dean, soulless. What would he be like? Sam loved his brother but he knew that Dean was angry. Thought of Dean in the house where they had rescued Claire when Dean still had the Mark. Dean surrounded by dead humans, sliced and bloody. That room with the brown and red paisley wallpaper, the wooden floor, the dumpster furniture and overturned lamp and Dean gazing around, empty, as if he’d just woken. Dean with a gun, or a knife and all the knowledge of hell’s torturer.

            Then he couldn’t think about it any more and he decided instead it was time to have a real drink. He should eat, too. Maybe he would, after the drink.


	4. Chapter 4

            Dean tried leaving messages. He left a note on the kitchen table saying, ‘I’m here, you just can’t see me.’

            Sam woke later than usual for Sam (no surprise, there had been some serious drinking the night before. Dean had sat and drank, too, but Sam never seemed to register that the level of liquor in the bottle was going down faster than Sam was drinking it up.) He walked into the kitchen. Dean had made coffee because even if stuff like that might fuck Sammy up, he still had to have his morning coffee.

            Sam grabbed the coffee pot and poured himself a cup. Only after he’d put the coffee pot back did he frown. Then he sat down and plunked his mug on Dean’s note.

            “You can drink the coffee but you can’t see the note?” Dean exploded. “Come on, man! Give me a fucking break!”

            Sam sipped his coffee, apparently not even interested in cream and sugar.  Sam usually drank black only when they were hunting and he couldn't be bothered or when he was up all night.

            Dean wondered what would happen if he dumped his coffee over his brother’s head. So he did.

            Coffee poured off Sam’s hair, dripped off his nose, splashed on the shoulders of the t-shirt he’d slept in. It was still pretty hot—not scalding hot, not like it was going to burn but tough to ignore. Sam sat there, lost in thought. After a moment he took another sip of his own coffee and a drop of Dean’s dripped off his nose into his own cup.

            While Sam sipped his coffee, Dean got himself another cup and on a whim, spelled out, ‘I’m here’ in toothpicks on the kitchen table.

            Eventually Sam washed out his coffee cup, put it in the drainer, and went back down the hall to the showers.

            Dean followed him.

            Sam stripped off his shirt and then frowned. He stared at it and then sniffed it. Then he took off back to the kitchen, agilely cutting around Dean without apparently seeing him. Dean found him there, staring at the puddle of coffee.

            “Dean?” Sam said.

            “Yes!” Dean said. “Right here!”

            Sam touched his wet hair. “What the fuck?” he said. It was the first thing Dean had heard him say in days. His eyes skidded over Dean, looking around the kitchen. He went and picked up the coffee pot, studying it like it was something he’d never seen before.

            “Come on, figure it out.”

            Eventually Sam took a sponge and cleaned up the coffee on the table and chair and floor. He knocked the note and the toothpicks off the table as if they weren’t there. Then he sat down and put his head in his hands.

            “You’re dead, aren’t you,” he said.

            “What?” Dean said. “No. Goddamn it.”

            Sam was wearing only sweat pants and Dean could see the goosebumps rising on his forearms.

            “Get some clothes on,” Dean snarled. “Eat something. Be a grown-up!” But Sam was in high genius mode. Dean could practically watch him think. Of course he’d think he was being haunted. Sam was up again and this time he headed for a storeroom. He pulled out a Ouija board and carried it back to the kitchen and set it on the table. He put the planchette in the center and said, “Talk to me, Dean. Please.”

            Would it work? Why could Sam drink the coffee but not see the toothpicks scattered all over the floor? Dean put his fingers on the planchette—

            —Sam went empty.

            Dean yanked his fingers back as if they’d been burned.

            Sam blinked and waited.

            Fucker was patient. He sat for almost an hour, eyes on the board. “Come on,” he whispered once.

            Finally he gave up, shoulders drooping. He left the Ouija board on the table and went and got a shower. Dean swept up the toothpicks and threw away the note.

#

            “How the fuck have you got this place organized?” Dean asked. He was looking for stuff about people being invisible to each other but all he’d been able to find was invisibility spells. “Most of these spells are bogus, you know that.”

            Sam did because he’d told Dean a long time ago that most books with spells in them were bogus but that they often contained traces of a real spell. He didn’t say that now because he couldn’t hear Dean.  

            “Oh here’s the ‘how to make mice’ one again,” Dean said. It was a spell for creating mice. It involved throwing a shirt in a corner with some grain under it and waiting for six weeks. “People are stupid. Don’t give me that crap about people are people and not stupid. This is just stupid.”

            Dean was trying to figure out how exactly this thing worked. The basics were pretty clear. Sam couldn’t seem to recognize any evidence of Dean’s existence. He knew that Dean had existed, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with his memory or his ability to look for Dean. The thing that was screwy was the ways that Sam could ignore Dean.

            Dean plunked a book down next to Sam with the page open to invisibility spells. “Get a hint,” he said.

            Not that Sam would. Instead he got up without noticing. Dean put himself between Sam and the kitchen. Sam walked around him without seeming to notice he had.

            Sam accepted that the coffee was made sometimes when he got into the kitchen. Why could he see that and not the book? Dean’s theory was that Sam would normally make coffee when he got up so it was impossible to ignore.

            Things weren’t consistent. After the day when he poured coffee over Sam’s head, he’d been relieved that Sam had eventually noticed it. The next day he did it again. After Sam had showered.

            Sam wandered around all day in coffee stained clothes, his hair a little stiff from drying. Sam had pushed his stiff bangs back without noticing.

            Dean had barely kept from shaking him, only the instinctive aversion to the way Sam went empty of personhood stopped him. It looked too much like he had just died. Dean had a creepy, irrational feeling that Sam’s brain stopped and that it might not restart. Like Sam would just not go back to actually seeing and feeling anything.

            “What are you even researching?” Dean might possibly be just repeating stuff Sam had already read. He wondered what Sam would do if he took his spot. So he sat down in front of Sam’s laptop. Sam came back with another cup of coffee and instead of going to sit down, frowned a moment and then went to look for a book.

            “Was that because I’m in your seat?” Dean called after him.

            Sam touched the spine of a book, tilting his head to read it, then sipped coffee.

            “Okay, you’re looking for missing persons, dead John Does, and I’M STILL HERE.” Dean leaned the chair back on two legs to get a better look at Sam. “I’m not dead. Dead men don’t make coffee.” Dean looked some more. A tab on parallel worlds. “Parallel worlds? Like all those space-time anomalies on Next Gen?”

            Sam pulled a book and brought it back to sit down at the other end of the table. He paged through it carefully. It was old, handwritten.

            Dean got up and looked over Sam’s shoulder when he stopped. The page was written in English, thank God. This looked like a kind of cross between a grimmoire and a journal. There was a pretty standard summoning spell and then an essay on spirits. The handwriting was impossible to read so after a moment, Dean just took the book out of Sam’s hands and rested a hand on his shoulder while he read more closely. Sam went empty.

           

            Knowe ynogh, in habit the gost is binden…

 

            The trick for this shit was read it out loud. _E-know e-nough, in habit the ghost is binded_ , er…bound, whatever. Sam was reading about ghosts, probably trying to figure out if Dean was haunting him with fucking coffee. “If I were going to haunt you I wouldn’t make you coffee. I’d kick your ass,” Dean said. “No cold spots, no ghost. Come on, Mensa, use your brain.” He put the book back in Sam’s hands and Sam seemed to take it without knowing, carefully enough. Dean took his hand away and Sam found his place and continued reading without seeming to have noticed.

            Dean went back to the laptop. Sam had downloaded some shit. Five scientific papers on schizophrenia and hallucinations. “You might be crazy but I’m not a hallucination,” Dean said. “Just look offended, okay? Even if you don’t know why. Throw a guy a bone.”

            Dean did a news search, looking for signs of Amara. He hadn’t been on the laptop for days. After awhile he looked up. He was about to say, “No sign of the bitch,” when he realized Sam was deep in thought. Not looking at the book, not looking at anything, just staring into middle distance, intent. He looked as if he might be on the verge of figuring something out. Dean waited, breath caught.

            Except it wouldn’t make any difference if he said something. “No sign of the bitch,” he said, for his own satisfaction.

            After a moment, Sam shook his head slightly and went back to the book.

#

            If Dean was haunting the place, Sam was sure he’d have talked through the Ouija board. Dean had talked through it when he was hung between life and death. Besides, Billie had promised them she would dump them in The Empty when they died.

            Dean not just dead, but gone. It didn’t explain the lost time and the groceries appearing in the kitchen or all the other minor weirdness’s. Sam felt as if Dean was there. On the other hand, he knew that what he thought and felt didn’t necessarily correspond with reality. He’d felt the presence of Lucifer after the wall came down until Castiel took it away and that hadn’t been true.

            He did something he hadn’t done in years. He dug out his 9mm. The Taurus was familiar. It was possibly the oldest possession he had except for a few photos in the memory box. He didn’t think of it much, couldn’t say he liked it or hated it. It was a tool. But holding it now was reassuring. He ejected the clip and made sure the chamber was clear. Took it apart and put it back together and pushed the clip back in. He took it with him and laid it on the library table where he could see it while he worked.

            He stared at his notes and at the tabs on the laptop.

            He was stuck. Okay, treat it like a logic problem.

            He opened a file he kept hidden. Inside were medical records from the mental institution where he’d been committed when his hallucinations became too much for Dean. Acute psychosis with hallucinations, acute intractable insomnia (with a note, _prion?_ ) religious ideation, and a list of drugs they’d tried. Pages of records. Sam studied them. This was different. He was sleeping and his nightmares were not particularly worse. He didn’t see Dean. He didn’t see or hear anything.

            He set the doc to print, picked up the 9mm and tucked it in the back of jeans, and went and watched the printer spit out page after page.

            When he nearly shot Dean, all those years ago, he remembered Dean driving them but the truth was he had to have driven the Impala himself. That had to be what was going on with the coffee and the groceries. He was doing it and then his brain was convinced he hadn’t. Which meant he was crazy again. So…he needed to find out for certain if Dean was dead. If Dean was alive, then Sam had to stay alive and figure things out. If Dean was dead then Sam was free.

            Well, there was Amara. He’d promised Dean he would take care of Amara. But first he had to find out if he was psychotic again.

            He gathered the copies of his file and put them in an envelope. He dug out IDs that matched the name on the medical file.

            He grabbed his duffle and locked up the bunker. He looked at the Impala. He shouldn’t take it but he…needed it. Fuck it. He’d take it. He threw the duffle in the back and climbed in. He put his 9mm in the glove box.


	5. Chapter 5

            Dean scrambled to get his stuff and follow Sam out of the bunker. “Slow down, you son of a bitch!” He’d been showering and came out toweling his hair to find Sam on some sort of mission. He barely got in the car before Sam put it in drive.

            “Where the hell are you going?” he asked. He looked around the car. Sam hadn’t brought his laptop. “Where do you go without your laptop? What the fuck are you doing, man?”

            Sam drove north. Outside the bunker it was the deep blue of evening, a clear, startling blue. There was already a star visible on the Eastern horizon. Sam drove to, of all places, Hastings, Nebraska. The only reason Dean could think of to go to Hastings was Bernardo’s. It was a steak house. But Sam headed west on 34, right at the edge of Hastings. He drove another twenty minutes before turning into a place called Hastings Regional Center. It was a complex of buildings, institutional and vaguely run down. Sam pulled the Impala over to the side of the road and stared at the building for awhile. He reached over and flipped the glove box open; Dean had to pull back to make sure they didn’t touch. He scrambled out when

            Sam grabbed his 9mm and tucked it away. Then he leaned against the car and stared at the place.

            “Is this a case?” Dean asked. “I mean, if you need to blow off some steam, I get it.” The building had a sign on it—Hastings Regional Center, Admittance.

            Oooookaaay.

            Dean Googled it on his phone, since Sam seemed to be going nowhere at the moment. “Psych hospital? Sam, we don’t seem to have a lot of luck with these places.”

            Sam reached behind and pulled out the Taurus and contemplated it.

            “Sam?” Dean said. “What the fuck. No. I’m not dead.”

            Sam looked up at the psych hospital and sighed. He looked…done. He slid down the Impala until he was sitting on the ground. The gun dangled. They were parked under a tree and while they were driving it had gotten dark. The lights from the hospital were yellow and Sam’s eyes were hidden in shadow.

            _Nonononono._ Dean lunged and grabbed the gun.

            Sam was still for long long moments. The Taurus was cool and weirdly heavy in Dean’s hand. He’d carried guns his whole life, it should have felt familiar but he wanted to throw it away. If he threw it away, though, Sam might be able to find it. Sam wouldn’t…

            Sam totally would. Sam had been trying to throw his life away for a fucking decade.

            Sam sort of shook himself and looked down at his empty hands. Then he was on his feet, his boots scuffing making the only sound. “What the fuck,” Sam whispered.

            Then, “Dean?” It was so quiet, so desperate, that little syllable.

            “Yeah,” Dean growled. “Not on my watch, you hear me.”

            They faced each other; Sam, crouched, with his arms a little away from his body, like he expected to be jumped, or to fight. Dean with the gun in his hands.

            “Please,” Sam whispered. “I can’t…I need…”

            “GODDAMNIT!” Dean said. “Sam, I’m trying!”

            After a moment, Sam straightened up and ran his hands though his hair and Dean could really finally see his eyes. They were dry and that, honestly, was scarier than anything.

            “If…you’re here,” Sam said, looking at the building, “I…I think I’m going crazy again. I mean, I keep losing time…like, you know, with Gadreel. Only I’m pretty sure it’s just me. I gotta find out if I’m crazy. I don’t know what else to do. So I thought I’d get myself committed, get medicated or something. I…what if something happened and I don’t remember?”

            “Nothing happened!” Dean said. “You’re the smart one! Use that fucking brain!”

            “…promised I’d take care of Amara but if I’m crazy, really like, losing it, I don’t know if I can. I can’t find any trace of her but what if that’s not real? I don’t know what’s real anymore, Dean.”

            Sam moved and again, Dean had to dance out of the way. Sam grabbed his duffle and started towards the building.

            Dean grabbed him. “No you don’t.” With his other hand he opened the contacts on his phone. He pushed Sam’s shoulder and Sam didn’t move, so he used one leg to knock behind Sam’s knee and Sam plunked onto his ass. Dean sat down next to him so he was touching, feeling the heat of his brother’s body against his leg and arm, and scrolled through their contacts.

            Garth was still alive. Probably. Hadn’t talked to him in years. Jesse and Cesar. They’d probably come through— Jody Mills. He hit call and prayed, answer answer, answer.

            “Dean,” Jody’s voice was brisk and reassuring.

            “Jody,” Dean said, “I need you to do something. I need you to call Sam and I need you to say exactly this—‘You’re not crazy, you’re cursed. Dean’s all right.’ Okay?”

            “Wait, what?” Jody said.

            “It’s an emergency, Jode,” Dean said.

            “Tell me again,” she said.

            “You’re not crazy, you’re cursed, Dean’s okay, tell him that and then tell him you’ll call him back and I’ll call you and fill you in,” he said.

            “Right now?” she asked.

            He moved away from Sam, “Yeah, right now.”

            By the time Sam blinked and looked around, his phone was ringing. Sam ignored it and it went to voicemail.

            “Pick it up!” Dean snarled.

            It rang again insistently and Sam pulled it out. He frowned and answered, “Jody, what’s wrong, is everything all right?” Right, Sam, Dean thought. You’re about to either commit yourself or blow your brains out and you want to know if they’re okay.

            Dean could hear her talking.

            “Wait, what?” Sam listened. “He’s okay? Where is he?!” Sam sagged and let the back of his head hit the side of the Impala.

            “No, I’m okay. I’m fine,” Sam said.

            ‘I’m fine.’ They really did say that too much.

            “No,” Sam said, “I’m not going anywhere.” Then he laughed shakily. “Hastings Regional. It’s a long story. Call me right back, I’m just going to sit here in the Impala.” He ended the call and just closed his eyes, all the fight gone out of him.

            Dean’s phone rang. “What the hell is going on?” Jody demanded.

            Dean realized he’d been holding his breath. “Thank God, Jody.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a whole scene of Sam checking in while Dean lurked around like something out of an M. Knight Shyamalan movie but it didn't feel right. So I chucked 2,000 words of psych hospital and all the research about what meds they would put Sam on and wrote this instead.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam heads for Jody's, and things are a bit weird.

            It was about five hours to Sioux Falls, but when Sam hung up with Jody he just sat down. He leaned up against the Impala and stared at the hospital. The light glowed on the basketball court. The door looked like a lighthouse, a safe thing to guide him but not his destination.

            Dean was okay. Dean couldn’t call him because Sam was cursed. He imagined them like magnets, Dean constantly repulsed and circling. He wondered what happened when Dean tried to get near him. Was he shoved outward?  Was it painful? Fuck it all. He listened to the katydids in the trees, the prairie equivalent of the sound of surf. He had spent a chunk of his life in the dark, listening. It lulled his mind empty.

            Jody didn’t call back for awhile but he didn’t mind. He was imagining Dean, hundreds of yards out, circling in the dark. He was sorry he’d taken the Impala. He had assumed his memory of stealing the car and following the Impala back to Kansas was not real, like his memory of Dean driving him the night he pulled a gun on Dean when he was still seeing Lucifer. He wasn’t crazy. He was cursed. Katy did, Katy didn’t.

            He didn’t even jump when Jody called him back.

            “Sam?” she said, “are you all right?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks. I am.”

            “Okay, I talked to Dean.”

            “He can’t even call me?” Sam said even though he knew the answer.

            “He can call you. You can’t hear him. You’re cursed.” Jody was matter of fact on the phone.

            “Why can’t he call me?” Sam asked.

            “I can’t tell you,” she said.

            “What kind of curse? And where’s Dean?” He knew he kept repeating himself.

            “Okay, I’m going to tell you, ready?” she said.

            “Okay,” he said.

            The katydid hitched a breath.

            “I told you,” Jody said.

            “No you didn’t,” Sam said.

            “Yeah, I explained where Dean was. Think, Sam, if I explained and you think I didn't, what just happened.”

            Jody said she’d told him but he didn’t remember it. Jody said— “That’s the curse? That people can’t tell me where Dean is?” What the hell? “What happens when you try?” he asked.

           “Apparently you sort of zone out, big time. Apparently it’s kind of freaky.”

            He shook his head.

            “Sam,” Jody said, “Dean would never leave you without telling you.”

            “Yeah, I know, not unless something happened like he was jumped or something,” Sam said.  The room had been empty.

            “Dean _would never just leave you_ ,” Jody said. She emphasized it.

            Actually, Dean did shit like that all the time.  Although he usually left a note or a text message.  Not that Jody needed to listen to Sam complain.  She'd said it with emphasis...that was when he put it together. “He’s here right now, isn’t he.”

            “I _can’t tell you_ ,” Jody said.

            He pulled the phone away and closed his eyes. “Dean,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

            “Sam,” Jody’s voice was far away. He put the phone up to his ear. “Sam,” said briskly again.

            “I’m here,” he said.

            “He’s already on the ragged edge,” Jody said. “He’s probably ready to smack you.”

            Sam grinned. “I can’t stop him. He should take his shot.”

            “That’s my boy,” Jody said, probably because she liked hearing him joke. “I want you to come right here.”

            “I…I will. But not tonight.  I'm wiped and not safe for a long drive.  I’m going to find a hotel and spend the night.”

            “Okay,” she said. “We’ll see you in the afternoon.”

            He ended the call. He was suddenly so tired he could hardly see. He opened the car door and sat down on the passenger side and used his phone to look for a nearby place to stay, probably back at the freeway.

            “Dean,” he said to the darkness. “I’m done. I’m going to find a hotel and get some sleep and head for Jody’s in the morning. If you’re here, I want you to know that. I’m just going to assume you’re here and tell you what I’m doing.” He rubbed his eyes hard.

            The light had shifted.  The hospital was gone.  In front of him was a two story building and an empty pool.  He was in the parking lot of a motel.

            He startled. “Fuck!” he said. “Jesus, warn me.” Then he laughed, “Wait, you can’t.”  He got out of the car and went inside and got a room.

            He was out when his head hit the pillow. It was the first decent night of sleep in over a week.

#

            Sam woke in the morning and looked for signs of Dean but didn’t see anything. He showered and was ready by seven. He opened the passenger side door of the Impala and got in. “If you want to drive,” he said, “go ahead.”

            Nothing happened which disappointed him somehow. He waited a minute and then got out and walked to the driver side. Dean didn’t want to drive OR Dean wasn’t here. He still didn’t understand exactly how this thing worked. He’d been sure the night before that Dean was there but now that seemed impossible.

            He stopped once on the way to Sioux Falls. “I’m gonna take ten minutes,” he said to the empty car. “Gonna fill the tank, get some coffee, take a leak. In that order. If you want to get something and hit the head, go ahead.”

            He got gas and got a couple of power bars to go with the coffee. Then he made sure to wait a little extra before pulling out and heading on to Sioux Falls. He hadn’t seen any evidence that Dean was with him. It wasn’t like being haunted anymore. He was beginning to believe his magnet theory, that Dean was out there, unable to come near. He should have left Dean the Impala.

            On the other hand, somehow he’d gotten to the motel last night. Did the curse implant false memories? Had his conversation with Jody been real? Or was it what he remembered? Maybe Jody had told him Dean was dead but he’d rewritten it.

            His thoughts were like a hamster on a wheel.

            He got to Jody’s at around noon. The only one home was Claire, sitting there with her raccoon make-up, watching TV. “Sam!” she said. “I gotta call Jody and tell her you’re here.”

            “How are you, Claire?” he asked. 

            “Better than you,” she said. She was stiff and kind of staring at him.

            “Why? Do I look different?” he said, looking at his pants, his hands.

            “No,” she said. Her eyes started to drift to the right—and then skip—and she was staring at him intently. “Yeah. Calling Jody,” she said. “You should sit down. Watch TV.”

            Dean?  Was Dean here?

            “Yeah,” she said to the phone. “Hey Jody, he…Sam’s here.”

            Jody said something.

            “Yeah,” Claire said. “He…I mean, yeah. Just…get here.”

            Another skip in time and the room was empty.

            He started to call Claire, his heart hammering, then stopped himself, carefully not thinking too hard about anything, and gingerly lowered himself to the couch. He reached forward and picked up the channel changer. Jody had cable. He found an old movie on TCN and tried to watch it. He was tense as hell.

            Don’t think.

            Dean had it. Just give in. He was cursed.

            Don’t think.

            Had anyone told Claire about Castiel?

            Sam heard the sliding glass door in back and then Claire came from the kitchen.  "Dude," she said.  

            "Is...did you skip class?" he asked.  

            "I have to leave in about twenty minutes," she said.

            "Is...is it creepy?  When it happens?" he asked.

            "It’s like you’re deaf,” she said. “Actually it’s more like you’re a store mannequin."

            "Sorry," he said.

            "It's not the weirdest thing that's happened to me."

            He couldn't help but smile a little.  "Me, either," he said.

            "I know," she said.  "I read the books."

            He felt like he hadn't slept the night before after all.  "Awesome," he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To hear the sound of katydids: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob2rEjRz-RM


	7. Chapter 7

            “Hey hey hey, gear down,” Jody said.

            Dean help up his hands in a half-hearted ‘I surrender’ kind of way. “WHAT?” He was in her backyard and he did have the vague sense that he might have been ranting. It was a nice backyard, a little disheveled.

            “You’re yelling at me,” Jody said. “I’m on your side.”

            “I’M NOT YELLING,” Dean said and caught himself. “Fuck. Jody. I’m…I’m just feeling like I’m losing it. I’ve been living with a cold and crazy psychopath who can’t even see me, the world is ending, again. Cas is…” he wasn’t going to say what Cas was… “on the injured list and not in the game.” Amara tugged at him from the inside, now that he’d gotten Sam somewhere safe. Amara was an ache. Blue balls of the soul.

            “Why did you wait so long to call me?” she asked, arms crossed. She was wearing her sheriff’s uniform.

            He opened his mouth to say something— _everybody, Bobby, Dad, everybody’s dead! We’re supposed to help YOU_ —and shut it. After a moment he said, “I got kind of caught up and didn’t think—”

            “You’re damn right you didn’t think,” she said and he thought she was going to reach around and slap the back of his head. “You or Sam. And Sam is not a psychopath.”

            “You just haven’t caught him on the right day,” Dean grumbled. She hadn’t seen him surrounded by research, eating like a machine.

            “When was the last time you slept?” Jody said.

            “I sleep!” He had to be careful, though. Who knew when Sam was going to decide to do something, like check into a psychiatric hospital. Keeping an eye on Silent Psychopath Sam was a fulltime job. “I could use a shower, though.” Hell, it was hard to shower, worrying. He hadn’t had a decent, hot water, relaxing shower since this all started.

            “I’m going to fix something to eat. How do you want to handle dinner?”

            It was 1:30 in the afternoon. Handle dinner?

            “Do you want to try to eat at a dinner table with Sam? Have him eat in the kitchen and you eat out here?”

            Oh, right. Claire hadn’t exactly done the greatest job at ignoring Dean’s existence. She’d tripped Sam’s ‘Shut Down’ mode several times. It was brisk outside but not bad in a jacket. “Out here,” he said. “Send Claire out if she wants to eat with me.”

            Jody nodded. “Why don’t you shower and then go lay down and get a quick nap. I’ll watch Sam. He’s not going anywhere.”

            “If he gets the idea he’s going to, just start talking about where I am and what I’m doing,” Dean said. “The way this thing works is screwy.”

 #

            He thought about how it all ‘worked’ in the shower. What Sam could and couldn’t see/hear and what triggered him to go away. Dean and Dean’s stuff were invisible. Dean had built an obstacle course of duffle bag and dirty clothes between Sam’s bedroom and the shower in the bunker and Sam had stepped over and around everything without seeming to register it. Then back while toweling his hair. If that wasn’t weird.

            Dean was invisible. If Dean stood in Sam’s way, Sam just walked around him. If Dean stood in a doorway so Sam couldn’t walk around him, Sam seemed to ‘change his mind’ and head for the kitchen or something.

            If other people noticed Dean, Sam either ignored them or went empty. The scary thing was that more and more, Sam went empty. At first Dean had to touch Sam. Now, when they first got to Jody’s, Sam had been okay for a few minutes. Then Claire couldn’t help looking at Dean while talking to Sam, Sam went gone.

            Claire had been all ‘what the fuck?’ (The girl had a mouth on her.) Dean had shrugged and told her, “He’s zoned.”

            She’d just stayed where she was until Dean said, “You can walk around. You can talk. He’ll stay like that.”

            Claire walked slowly to the couch. She waved her hand in front of Sam. Sam didn’t react. “This is so creepy,” she said. “Oh fuck, is he breathing?”

            “Yeah,” Dean said although the moment he said it he wasn’t sure. Was Sam breathing? He’d never checked.

            “Oh yeah,” Claire said, bending over. “He is. But like, barely.” She shuddered. “He like one of those things at Disney.”

            “Animatrons,” Dean said.

            “Dude, that’s a pretty big word for you,” Claire said.

            Dean gave her the finger and then checked behind him to see if Jody was walking in.

            Claire rolled her eyes. She stared at Sam. “What happens if I poke him?”

            Dean said, “Nothing.”

            Claire poked him in the chest. Sam rocked just ever so slightly but nothing else happened. “Dude, you’re like muscled.”

            “He works out a lot.” Sam worked out every day in the bunker, ran and did pushups and shit on hunts. Dean didn’t tell her that Sam had always been a bit of a nut about it but that since the Cage, it was like it held him together. Like if he could get his muscles and tendons to be like steal, that would hold him together. Dean also didn’t mention how much harder it was for Dean to work out since Sam got back from the Cage. That he still did some, but workouts had bad associations with Sam either Soulless or staving off the crazies.

            “When will he come back?”

            “When the curse thinks there’s no clue to my existence.”

            “So if I ignore you,” Claire said, “he should like be normal.”

            She plunked back down on the couch next to Sam (but with as much distance between them as she could put and Dean couldn’t blame her.) She turned on the TV.

            Sam didn’t move.

            After a couple of minutes Dean sighed. “I think maybe we better just leave him here.”

            “But I’m ignoring you, ignoring everything except the TV,” Claire said. “Do you think he’s…stuck?”

            “No.” Yes. “I think he’s just good at reading body language and putting together clues and the curse is not letting him do that. You guys got any beer?”

            Claire turned the TV off again and put the remote near Sam. “This is way fucked up,” she said. She studied Sam for a moment. Then she got up and Dean followed her to the kitchen for a beer.

            “What if he gets stuck?” she asked.

            I shoot him in the head and then myself, Dean thought. “Not gonna happen. We’ll figure this out,” he said. “We always do.”

            No way was Dean going to admit it was getting worse.

          


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner at Jody's. Sam is losing time.

            “Fuck,” Sam muttered. He was getting better at feeling the skips. He looked down at his chicken and dumplings.  It was really good. Everything Jody cooked was good. Real food. Food families ate. There was wine. He had been feeling a bit relaxed. Claire had been eating in another room and suddenly here getting more chicken and dumplings from the crock pot but that wouldn’t have made him slip time. Everyone was not looking at him.

            “Did you get the FAFSA form done?” Alex asked Jody. It screamed, _act normal_.

            Dean must have come in. Or someone said something—he didn’t know what but Jody had made it clear that whenever she tried to explain things to him, he skipped. When he realized that Dean was there at the hospital in Hastings, it had been great. Even if he couldn’t see him, Dean was okay. Jody had told him.

            But now. He kept watching people for some sign that Dean was around.

            Now, it was like skips in a record. He was losing bits of time. Constantly.

            He ate the chicken and dumplings, keeping his eyes on the plate. Don’t think about Dean. Don’t think. Eat. Think about the taste of Jody’s food.

            “This is great,” he said. And realized only then that he had interrupted some conversation between Jody and Alex. They stopped, looking at him. “The food is great, Jody,” he said. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m just—kind of…never mind.”

            Jody put on a smile. “No, no worries, thanks Sam.”

            He forced himself to engage. Don’t think about if Dean is here watching. Don’t watch for their eyes to shift or them to get distracted. “What are you thinking about taking in college?” he asked Alex.

            “I…don’t know. Maybe something in the medical field, like to be a tech or something?” Alex pulled herself into the conversation. “I mean, things like blood don’t bother me.”

            Sam laughed, genuinely. “Yeah, I bet. So med school?”

            Alex shook her head. “I missed…too much. I don’t have the grades. Maybe nursing. Except I hate the idea of, you know, people. That sounds stupid.”

            “Hell no,” Sam said. “Nursing is…like the most difficult babysitting job in the world.”

            Jody barked out a laugh. “Thanks, Sam.”

            Sam shook his head. “No, there’s lots of other medical stuff to do. MRI techs. CT techs. Getting a CT scan from a guy who can’t find a vein to give you the contrast stuff? I mean, I’ve got pretty decent veins, apparently a moron can find them. But some people, I remember when the woman before me in the hospital had to be stuck a bunch of times because she was diabetic. And CT scans are cool to look at. MRIs are even better.”

            “I love MRI scans!” Alex said. “We did this thing where we could like shadow somebody for career day? I was at Sanford and—”

            Nobody was looking at him. “What hap—fuck. I mean, how long—” Again. Goddamn it. “Never mind.” Sam rubbed his chest. Realized what he was doing. “Sorry.”

            “It’s okay,” Jody said.

            It wasn’t their fault. “Yeah,” Sam said, trying to smile.

            “No, really, it’s okay. Um…Dean would apologize if he were here,” Jody said. “He—”

            …

            Jody looked consternated.

            “It’s okay,” Sam said. He could see something, like she was kind a surprised he’d said something. He took a bite of his chicken and dumplings. His cold chicken and dumplings. Alex was gone. The table was clear except for his plate. Jody had a cup of tea in front her.

            “Let me heat that up,” Jody said.

            He didn’t really want it anymore but he let her. She bustled around, all efficient and pragmatic.

            “There’s ice cream for dessert,” she said.

            “Tell me I don’t drool,” he said.

            That made her relax a bit. “No, you don’t drool.”

            He let her fuss a bit, putting things in the dishwasher while his food was in the microwave. It dinged and he started to get up but she waved him back into the chair and brought him the rest of his dinner.

            “How long?”

            She shrugged. “Not that long.”

            “Jody,” he said.

            She sat down. “About half an hour. There was some…shouting.”

            He nodded. Dean had lost his shit. He couldn’t say it, though because if Jody tried to tell him he suspected it would shut him down again. “I can’t help watching for signs,” he said. “It’s worse now. It’s like because I know a little, everything clamps down harder.”

            Jody wanted to say something, to tell him things. He could see it.

            “Don’t let him leave,” he said. “He doesn’t do well alone.”

            She made a funny expression. Part exasperation and part something else. “Neither do you,” she said.

            It was the wine. He took another drink. He rarely drank wine but he liked it. He could feel himself…he was on the edge. “God, Jody, I’m so tired,” he admitted.

            She reached out an grabbed his hand. He closed his eyes and hung on.

            “You’re not alone,” she said. “I promise you, Winchester.”

            He let himself hold on a minute. You get people killed, a voice whispered in his head. Don’t let anyone get close.

            He pulled his hand back. Pulled out the same kind of thing he did when he had to be an FBI agent or a CDC agent or a priest for God’s sake. “We’ll figure it out,” he promised. “We always do.”

            He had to start researching. Figure out what caused this. Figure out how to stop it. Figure out Amara. Save Cas.

            “Eat,” she said.

            So he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at work on a novel. (Almost at 60,000 words!) So I can only work on this after I've met my daily word count on that. Also, I have NO IDEA anymore where this is taking me. I mean, I'm pretty sure if Sam were a little more collected he'd realize the obvious--that this started from the the thing he was trying to translate. But is it unbelievable that he's so fragmented by what's happening and by worry about Dean that he isn't thinking straight?


	9. Chapter 9

            It turns out that when you lose a couple of hours in a day, you don’t sleep well that night. At least Sam didn’t. He wasn’t tired, it was like he’d napped. So he thought. Not about Dean, exactly. Kind of around Dean. The whole situation. They had taken over Jody’s house. Claire and Alex were sharing a room so he could sleep in Alex’s room. ‘I’m super busy so I’m never home anyway,’ she’d said breezily. That left the couch for…anyone extra.

            There was an old alchemy joke that translated to something like, how do you turn lead into gold? (There was a long list of nonsense ingredients thrown into a pot) and then stir and stir and stir and do not think of a large white elephant. It was probably better in the original Persian.

            The hardest thing to do was not think of Dean possibly asleep on Jody’s couch. More likely, drinking.

            They couldn’t stay like this. It was nothing short of impossible for Jody. He (they) could go back to the Bunker. He could start looking for anything like this curse. But in the Bunker he’d probably start losing time like a mother with Dean around. If Dean was around.

            If he couldn’t sleep, he could check the state of the paranormal in the US. He grabbed his laptop and climbed back into Alex’s bed. Alex apparently liked purple. The bedspread was different purples in a quilted kind of pattern. The curtains were purple. A stuffed purple zebra watched him from the top of her chest of drawers. He rather liked the company of the purple zebra.

            Her bed was too short but, hey, not the first time.

            He opened his browser, searched and found a report of seven people dead in a church in Waupaca, Wisconsin. Parfreyville Evangelical was a pretty little white church surrounded by trees. In the fall it would be beautiful—calendar picture perfect. Not the kind of place where the sheriff’s department expected to find evidence that people had torn each other to shreds. (None of that was in the paper but the sheriff’s department had an old network and was using Windows 7 which had a famous ‘back door’ security flaw if you didn’t update Windows desktop security. If municipal departments ever started getting enough money to keep their computer systems upgraded, Sam’s life would become a lot harder. He was no Charlie Bradbury, just a guy who wrote a bare bit of code and knew where to find hacker forums.)

            It seemed like it could be Amara. It was her M.O.

            Right now they were standing still. Imposing on Jody. Getting more and more lost in this curse. If he and Dean would separate, he’d stop losing so much time and he could keep Dean updated through Jody.

            He started on file on Parfreyville.

#

            Jody didn’t like it. “You need to get this curse resolved,” she said. Then, “Did I just say that? Your lives are weird, Winchester.”

            Sam scratched his head, feeling awkward. “Yeah, not going to dispute that. Look, the longer I stay here, the more I’m going to lose time which isn’t fun for me and is probably creepy as fuck for the rest of you. I mean creepy as hell. Heck.”

            “Creepy as fuck is more accurate,” Jody said. “But you would be hunting alone. I’m pretty sure that’s not a great idea.”

            “I’ve hunted alone before. A lot.” After the Mystery Spot. When Dean was in Hell. When he was soulless. When he and Dean split up. Not hunting alone, when Dean was in Purgatory, was the biggest regret of his life. Except for Ruby and releasing Lucifer. And…well, it was a big regret.

            Jody poured him a cup of coffee. They were in her kitchen and Jody was in a robe and pajamas. “How’s that worked out for you?” she asked.

            “Sometimes better, sometimes worse,” Sam said. He sipped the coffee. “I love it here,” he said.

            Jody quirked an eyebrow.

            “Your kitchen. In the morning,” he said. “It’s clean and yet lived in and it feels…normal.”

            Alex came in. “’Morning Sam. Morning Jody. I’ve got to get to school early. My senior English presentation is due today.”

            “What’s it on?” Sam asked.

            “Romance novel tropes,” she said. “The heroine usually has unusually colored eyes and beautiful hair. She thinks of herself as ordinary. She has a kind of weird name like ‘Dakota’ or a kind of guy’s name. The magic hoo-ha. Stuff like that.”

            Jody blinked, “The magic hoo-ha?”

            Sam felt a fleeting moment of panic.

            Alex opened her mouth and Jody said, “Wait, I don’t want to know.”

            Relief.

            “Anyway,” Alex said. “I’ve got a power point with covers and stuff. I want to fine tune it this morning. This guy I know is like incredible at power point and he’s going to help.”

            “A guy,” Jody said, carefully neutral. Alex’s last boyfriend had turned out to be vampire. Turned because of someone from Alex’s past.

            Alex looked disgusted. “Brian. He’s gay and a year younger than me.” She glanced up at Sam. “Hey, you’d be a pretty good romance heroine. You’ve got weird colored eyes, great hair, and a weird name for a girl. And you’re kind of down on yourself sometimes. You want to be a visual aid?”

            “I lack a magic—” Sam waved his hand to connote ‘hoo-ha’.

            Alex mock punched him in the arm. “I didn’t say you were perfect.” She hugged Jody and grabbed a yoghurt out of the fridge, stuffed it in her backpack and headed out the door.

            “I don’t think you should go hunting by yourself,” Jody said.

            “How about a scouting mission, to gather intelligence. If this is what I think it is,” Sam said, “it’s already long over. Amara is trying to get her brother’s attention and if it didn’t, she’s gone.”

            “Because I don’t think you’re going to be alone for long and if it isn’t what you think, then your current susceptibility to…”

            “Stop?”

            Jody nodded, “What’s to keep that from happening at the worst possible moment? You know if you take off…” she paused, trying to think of how to say Dean would go after him without sending him into a kind of out of body time out.

            “I could go with him,” Claire said.

            Jody and Sam turned to her and simultaneously said, “No.”

            Claire shrugged. “It’s going to be hard to stop me.” She was standing in archway wearing jeans and a t-shirt and, God help him, a plaid shirt. She had her backpack.

            “You think of going anywhere and I’ll ground you so fast,” Jody said.

            Claire rolled her eyes spectacularly. “Like that works. And,” she said to Sam, “I can sabotage this so easy. All I have to do is text Dean and start saying stuff that will shut you down.”

            “CLAIRE,” Jody said. “We have talked about mutual respect—”

            “This isn’t the kind of hunt for someone new to hunting—” Sam said at the same time.

            Claire held up her cell phone. “Want to keep talking, Sam?”

            Dealing with her was like dealing with Dean.

            “Look,” she said, “you said intelligence gathering. That’s a good thing for me to learn.”

            “No,” Jody said. “You’ve got school.”

            “I can miss two days and then it’s the weekend. He needs a chaperone.”

            Why were people always deciding he needed a chaperone?

            “Claire,” Jody said. “I cannot stop you from running off, but we talked about if you do, you’re burning bridges in this house.”

            “I’m not running off,” Claire said. “I’m telling you. I’m going with Sam.”

            Sam shook his head. “I don’t know what this really is.”

            Claire shook the phone. “He’s on speed dial. And if we want to get out of here, we should probably do it in the next twenty minutes or so.”

            Which meant Dean was out—don’t think about that.

            He blinked, time had shifted a bit.

            Jody sighed. “Well, hell,” she said.

#

            “You’re renting a car?” Claire said. An airplane came in low overhead, landing. They were at the airport.

            Sam nodded, parking hers. “Yeah. I’m not taking the Impala and I’m not stealing one.”

            “We could take mine,” she said.

            Sam regarded the ancient Corolla she was driving. “I can do some basic car stuff but I don’t know that I can keep this on the road all the way to Wisconsin and back,” he said.

            “Are you dissing my car?” she said.

            She followed him into the rental place which was all huge windows and counter. He produced a driver’s license and a credit card for Sam Butler. He rented a midsize because he couldn’t bear the thought of hours pretzeled into an economy. “I haven’t got a midsize on the lot,” the kid behind the counter said, “but I can put you in an Impala for the same price.”

            “Sure,” Sam said. He figured it was karma.

            The Impala had 17,000 miles on it and was blue. It smelled like polymers—new car smell.

            “This is pretty,” Claire said.

            Sam pushed the seat back as far as it would go, and adjusted everything.

            “Can I drive?” Claire asked.

            “No,” he said.

            Claire shrugged. He steered them out of the lot and onto the freeway. He figured since they rarely used the freeway it gave him a shot at getting to Wisconsin without interference.

            “Sam?” Claire said.

            “Anything you want on the radio,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

            “No, I mean thanks but what I was going to ask you is what’s going on with Castiel?”

            Sam sighed.

 

           

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more on Romance Novel tropes, check out http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceNovelTropes
> 
> If you want to lose days on a website, check out TV Tropes at http://tvtropes.org/
> 
> Also I swear this was going to be 5,000 wds long.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam's gone one way, Dean goes another.

*   *   *

 

            “Explain it again, Jody,” Dean said. “Like I was five. You let Sam and Claire go on a hunt?”

            “I did not let anyone to anything,” Jody said. “Claire is over eighteen and Sam is very over eighteen. I said no. I expressed my objections. They left.”

            Dean really wasn’t listening. He really didn’t care. He’d seen Jody’s mom voice stop Sam like a train. Hell, it had stopped him like a train. “So Negasonic Teenage Hunter and a guy who periodically exits his own skull are out there hunting Amara.”

            “Sam only spaces out if you’re there,” Jody pointed out.

            “Amara is GOD’S SISTER!” Dean said.

            Jody got up from her desk and went and closed her office door. “She’s what?”

            “God’s freakin’ sister,” Dean said. “And Cas let Lucifer out of the Cage and now Lucifer is wearing Cas like a rented tuxedo while HE hunts Amara. Sam spent almost two hundred years with that dick being tortured and raped and now whenever he gets even a whiff of that feathered asshole he goes apeshit full-on PTSD mode. Not to mention Lucifer would just as soon kill Sam as look at him. And now there’s an eighteen year old girl tagging along! This is not one of those movies where the crusty, damaged old veteran is healed and redeemed by the troubled but plucky teenager!”

            Jody walked right into his space until they were about nose to nose. “If you don’t stop yelling at me I will put you in a cell until you calm the heck down, mister.”

            Jody’s mom voice did make him step back. He figured, when he thought about it, being a woman sheriff did require someone to not take much guff.

            “Damn it,” he said. “Where’s he going.”

            “He carefully did not tell me where he was going,” Jody said. “Pretty sure he knew you would ask.”

            Dean called his brother.

 _Hi, it’s Sam, leave a message. If it’s an emergency, call Dean_.

            “Call me back, dumbshit, or I’ll kick your ass next time I see you.” It was obligatory but meaningless. Sam wouldn’t call him back.

            “He can’t hear that, you know,” Jody said.

            Shit shit shit.  No, of course not.  But it was his first instinct, _call Sam_.

            “You could try calling Claire,” Jody said.

            Claire wouldn’t pick up, either. He left a more polite message. He couldn’t believe that Sam had taken Claire. “If he’s not taking the Impala,” Dean said, “how are they getting there?”

            “They left in Claire’s car,” Jody said. “It’s a ’97 Corolla. If they planned to do something else, they were careful not to share it with me.”

            Amara was a constant ache in Dean. Part of him wanted to have gone with them just because he had a nagging itch, a pull, a need. It didn’t pull him in any specific direction, though.

            “Tell me about Amara,” Jody said.

            “She’s a badass,” Dean said. “Like, worse than Lucifer. Check out Superior, Nebraska.”

            Jody frowned. “Superior, Nebraska? That was the sight of that chemical spill, we got a bulletin. Something like 400 people died there?”

            “No spill,” Dean said. “That was Amara. And at the time she was a baby.”

            Jody chewed on her thumbnail. “If she’s God’s sister, how could she be a baby?”

            Dean explained. At least, what he could.

#

            Jody pointed out that if Dean showed up anywhere around Sam it would shut Sam down. Dean got on her computer and started looking for his brother. No GPS (of course) but he hit one of the credit cards—Budget Rent a Car™. Well, they weren’t in Claire’s Corolla. Did Sam care that Dean knew? It didn’t tell him much. Sam might have been able to hack Budget’s system and find out what car but Dean was happy to admit that for him, hacking involved a machete. He’d seen those forums that Sammy followed on Dark Net to do hacking shit and he couldn’t even understand what the titles of the posts meant.

            “Jody,” he asked, “you got a bulletin about Superior. Any bulletins in the last couple of days?”

            “We get bulletins all the time,” she said. “Amber Alerts, all sorts of shit. I haven’t seen anything that stood out.”

            She leaned over his shoulder and called up an email. “Have at it,” she said.

            There were over 300 emails. Dean groaned.

            “How do you boys find stuff?” Jody asked.

            “Sam has a bunch of alerts,” Dean said. “Mutilated bodies, shit like that. And we look at news sites. But he’s got his laptop.”

            “I need my computer back, I’ve got to work. But I can put you on one in the office.”

            There were people who hadn’t been working in Sioux City when the dead rose and Jody introduced Dean to them as ‘a consultant.’ Everyone who knew him didn’t look at him. No one wanted to remember.

            Dean google-searched ‘mutilated body’ and then realized that Sam must have a way to eliminate stuff outside of the U.S. because his third hit was in India. Well, he sure as hell didn’t know how to do it. He sighed. Every minute Sam and Claire were getting farther away.

            It was almost two hours later when he hit on a crime involving a man in a trench coat. He skimmed across it. The crime was weird. A witness said that the man in the trench coat had just ‘exploded two guys in suits, like they were just spatter and goo.’ The witness had not seen a weapon. The police speculated that the victims had been wired with explosives or something and that the killer had been holding a detonator because the witness said he did something with his fingers. The killer was described as a white man, dark-haired, normal looking, also wearing a suit.

            There was a blurry picture but it sure looked like Cas.

            Dean grabbed his phone and called Claire. Claire didn’t pick up but he left a message. “Is this about Rock Springs, Wyoming?”

            He looked for more on the crime while he waited, hoping Claire would answer.

            After five minutes a text came back ‘whats at rock sprng?’

            That could mean that they were headed somewhere else or it could mean that they were playing games. “Call me if you want to know,” he growled at his phone and went to tell Jody he was leaving.

#

            Dean didn’t think Sam was going after Cas.

            He had a strong sense of his brother and while it was possible that Claire hadn’t even said anything to Sam (likely if they were in public or driving—fuck all, driving, should Sam be in a car?) If he ran into them in Rock Springs, he did. If he didn’t, he’d keep searching the news.

            Rock Springs was a haul. A long twelve hours of driving which got him into the Saddle Lite Motel at a little before 2:00am. The Saddle Lite was a little two story place that had been recently ‘renovated’, apparently from flophouse to just to code. He slept six hours and then had breakfast from a drive-in called Grubs. The bacon was good.

            Rock Springs Police Department was a squat, square brick building across the street from a fire house and a place that advertised ‘Auto Glass Commercial and Residential’. He presented himself as Agent Weller. It took him an hour but he walked out with the names of two witnesses to the guy in the trench coat.

            “It was the oddest thing,” the first witness said. She was middle-aged and wore one of those ‘nice’ tops that were apparently a kind of uniform issued along with AARP memberships—not a t-shirt but as comfortable in a t-shirt, in a color that Dean was pretty sure was called ‘coral’. “These two very nicely dressed men walked towards him and he turned around—now I was across the street. My car is in the shop, the muffler all but fell off—and Diane was picking me up.” She wasn’t rattling on so much as re-living the moment, eyes unfocused. “Agent, I would say no one should trust their memory, but I swear he turned around and had this kind of smiley, not nice, a smirk, face. Then it looked like he snapped his fingers.”

            Dean nodded. “What happened?”

            She shuddered. “They just…it’s not like they exploded, it was like they were puree’d. Like they spattered.”

            Dean kept his face steady. He’d seen Lucifer do that to Cas at Stull.

            “What does that?” she asked. “Is it something that the government is working on like, I don’t know, drones that look like mosquitos?”

            “I don’t know, ma’am, but that’s what I’m here to find out,” he said. “Drones that looked like mosquitos. That was a thought. Sam would probably tell him you could buy them off the shelf at Target.

            Fuck Sam. Getting cursed.

            “You said in your statement,” Dean said, “that the men he…”

            “Puree’d,” she supplied, her gaze daring him to contradict her.

            “…puree’d,” he agreed, “were from out of town. How did you know that?”

            “Two black men in impeccable suits?” she said. “Look around, agent. How many black people do you see in Rock Springs.”

            “Um, right,” Dean said. It was true. Rock Springs was white. Whiter than white. There weren’t even very many Hispanics. “Did you notice anything else about the men in suits?”

            “No, I was watching the man in the trench coat. He dresses like an insurance agent. But there’s something about him. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.”

            “Because…he was interesting? Attractive?”

            “He’s probably attractive,” she said. “I don’t know. It wasn’t very long.”

            “Did you notice anything else, smells, did it get colder?”

            “It smelled like rotten eggs,” she said. “Is that part of the government device puree’d and splattered thing?”

            She was sharp. He leaned closer to her and said, “Off the record? Totally.”

            She rubbed her forehead. “I feel like I’ve been dropped into Area 51.”

            He nodded sympathetically. He wished that’s all it was.

            Outside the nice two story home, he sat in the Impala and stared at the surveillance photos. It was grainy but it sure looked like Cas. Two guys walk towards him, one black, one actually dark-skinned Asian-Indian, and there’s a photo that catches him turning around and starting to raise his hand. Next photo there’s only Lucifer, hand in the air like he’d just snapped his fingers, and spatter like paint cans exploded. Dean could go on to the next witness but seriously, it wasn’t like they could lead him to Lucifer. Lucifer didn’t have a fixed address. The question was, was he here randomly when he was approached by two demons? Was he here looking for Amara? A Hand of God?

            Would be great to have Sam find something about now, look over from his laptop (why anyone ever believed an FBI Agent would have hair like that was beyond Dean, but hey, Bikini Inspector) and say, “Get this…”

            Instead, Dean headed for the library to see if there was anything Satanic about Rock Springs.

           

           


	11. Chapter 11

            If someone asked Claire, she’d say she liked Sam. She did. He was old and awkward sometimes but he wasn’t the asshole Dean could be. (Although Dean was…entertaining.) Sitting next to him in a rented 2016 Impala she felt nervous because she didn’t really know anything about him and he was a large, adult man. Very large. Dean was usually strutting around doing macho bullshit so she didn’t usually think of Sam as aggressively _guy_ —he was a dork and the way he ate at Jody’s the last time—like a six year old—made him seem like a kid.

            She’d read the Carver Edlund books, even the ones online. (They ended with Sam dragging Lucifer into hell and something about good and evil and making the choice for family and fuck that, this was _damning someone’s soul to hell forever_.) But was really hard to think of Sam as that guy; hard to think that he’d been in college, had a girl friend, and been a demon blood addict. The books stressed how much he thought of himself as a loser and a freak but he’d obviously gotten over that. Mostly she remembered that he didn’t think she should hunt but he’d shown her how to hack credit cards to find her mom. He actually talked to her instead of lecturing her.

            When she asked him what was going on with Castiel, he took a long moment. “Castiel is in trouble,” he said.

            “What kind of trouble?” she asked.

            “What do you know about Lucifer?” Sam asked.

            He clearly expected some kind of ‘Lucifer, you mean the devil?’ response. “I know you dragged him and Michael back into the…um Pit? It had a name.”

            He glanced over from driving, just a flicker. “How do you know that?” he asked.

            “The Supernatural books. The last one is called _Swan Song_ and it’s all about you and Lucifer.”

            He didn’t say anything, just driving for a long suspended moment, then he pulled the Impala onto the shoulder. “It was called The Cage,” he said, “and Castiel isn’t there.”

            “Okay,” she said because she hadn’t been thinking he was. Then it struck her that Sam had thought she was thinking that and since he’d just said something about Lucifer, she felt weird. Weird and embarrassed because Sam had turned to look at her, leaning so his elbow was on the steering wheel of the Impala and it was the kind of look social workers have when they deliver bad news.

            “Look,” he said. “You’ve read the books. So you know I used to get visions?”

            Just tell me, she thought. “Yeah?” she said because the Winchesters never told people shit and Sam was talking serious shit here.

            “I started getting them again,” Sam said, looking at her, steady and calm.

            Why didn’t it feel steady and calm? What did that have to do with that moron angel?

            “I was getting visions of the Cage, from the outside. Other visions, too. I prayed. I thought they were from God telling me to go talk to Lucifer to help us with this, with The Darkness.” He stopped, waiting to see her reaction.

            “Okay?” she said, not sure what she was supposed to say.

            “They weren’t,” he said. “When we, when I let loose The Darkness, by accident, it cracked the Cage and Lucifer was sending the visions. I met with him. He was supposed to be contained in Limbo but he—pulled me into his holding cage. Dean and Cas came to help. Lucifer convinced Cas to let him possess him.”

            Claire was pretty used to be told that she was smart, just not living up to her potential but this was… “What’s Limbo?” she asked even though that wasn’t even the first question she should be asking.

            Sam’s eyebrows did something, she hoped he wasn’t laughing at her. “The Roman Catholic Church believes that Limbo is where the souls of unbaptized babies go, that it’s not heaven but they aren’t tormented,” Sam said. “Crowley said it’s the ass end of Hell. I didn’t really see any dead or demons there but I was preoccupied.”

            “So what’s happened to Castiel?” she said, still not following.

            “Your father’s body is gone,” Sam said gently. “It has been for a long time. God…recreated Castiel a vessel that looks like it.” She watched his thoughts happen. “You know about Stull?” he asked.

            She didn’t.

            “Where I…jumped?” he said.

            Oh yeah. “Yeah?” she said.

            “Lucifer killed Castiel there. God apparently brought him back. He has more than once. He looks like your father but he’s—”

            “Okay,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about her father. “Wait, so, Castiel is a meat suit? But he’s an angel.”

            Sam shrugged. “I know.”

            He was still doing the social worker thing. He probably didn’t talk to Jody or Dean like this. Like what did he think, she cared THAT MUCH about Castiel? He was the angel who took her family from her. “So how do you know this for certain?” she asked.

            “He was in…he was helping us and it turned out he wasn’t Cas,” Sam said and when he said that he straightened back up, put the car in drive.

            “So now you gank him? Send him back to the Pit or the Cage or whatever you call it?” she asked. Fuck him if he thought she was going to get all sentimental over Castiel.

            Sam checked the rearview and waited until there was a gap in traffic. The Impala pushed forward off the shoulder, ramping up to speed. “We need to save Cas and stop The Darkness. Then deal with Lucifer.”

            “Wait, Lucifer is less of a problem than this Darkness thing?”

            “Michael is still in the Cage. Lucifer can’t bring on the Apocalypse although he can still do a lot of damage,” Sam said.

            “Well, what the hell is he going to do?” Claire said. “I’d think Lucifer is a pretty big deal!”

            Sam took a deep breath and holy Christ was there a lot of chest moving when he did that. “I know what Lucifer can do, Claire. I’m kind of an expert. So if I think the Darkness is worse, you should think about that very seriously.”

            “Don’t patronize me,” she spat.

            “I spent a very, very long time in the Cage which is a place that scares demons. I was there for eighteen months, topside time.” He glanced over at her. “It’s not easy or fun for me to talk about any of this. I’m not patronizing you, Claire. I’m taking you very seriously.”

            Then she felt angry and stupid. If he didn’t want to talk about it, just fucking tell her why.

            She remembered. Dean had spent four months in Hell. It had been forty years for him. Sam had said eighteen months topside time. So that meant… She wanted to ask if time was the same in the Cage as it was in regular Hell but that would be stupid.

            So she didn’t.

#

            They were at this church in the middle of nowhere and Sam was wearing a suit. He’d made her pick out a jacket and a skirt and made an ID and a lanyard for her. Her name was Claire Christian and her cover was that she was a senior at Georgetown University interning at the FBI. He had made her pull her hair back. Told her to think Jody Foster from Silence of the Lambs. The skirt made her hips look like they were three feet wide.

            Sam looked really good in a suit. She thought he’d look like Castiel, awkward and dorky, especially since Sam had the worst taste in shirts of maybe anyone on the planet but his suit fit and his shoes were nice and holy fuck he was like a different guy. She had always liked his hair. Not that she was going to tell him.

            Sam cut through police tape and tested the front door. It was locked. He fished a lock pick set out of his inside jacket pocket. She’d been learning to pick locks—there were a ton of videos on YouTube. He glanced at the lock, selected a pick. She craned to see it was a Yale—she wondered how he could just glance and know which pick to select. He tugged at his pants and crouched.

            His hands were so big they looked like they’d be clumsy but it took him seconds and the door opened.

            “Wow,” she said. She didn’t mean to, it just slid out.

            He glanced at her as he put the lock pit set back in his pocket.

            “I’ve been practicing,” she said. “But you make it look so easy.”

            He shrugged. “I started learning when I was eight. My dad used to time us.”

            He pulled out his gun and used his shoulder to push the door the rest of the way open. “Watch,” he said. He checked everything he could see before he entered the room, pushing the door against the wall before he entered. “Corners, behind the door, ceiling,” he said. “Cold spots, smell, sounds. What do you notice?”

            “Umm…”

            “Claire.”

            “Nothing?” she said. It looked like a church with pews and white walls, a plain altar. Windows. Nothing on the ceiling. Nobody there. Yellow caution

            “Normal temperature. Blood stains on the floor by the altar. Smells like furniture polish, maybe Murphy Oil soap. The air is still so if there’s another door or window open there isn’t a draft.”

            Okay. She was stupid.

            “Nobody has been here for awhile. Somebody walked in the blood,” Sam said. “Not cops, that’s something, the shoe prints look like athletic shoes, not cop shoes. You’d be surprised how many times you see bad police procedure.”

            She saw the smudges then. “How can you tell they’re not cop shoes?” she asked.

            He walked down the aisle and crouched next to one. “See the kind of diamonds?”

            She saw the treads.

            “Those are Converse,” he said. “Cops don’t usually wear Converse. Probably whoever found the bodies.”

            “How do you know all this?” she asked.

            “I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes,” he said.

            “Can I hunt with you guys,” she blurted out.

            He just looked at her so sadly. She thought she might be in love.


	12. Chapter 12

            There was no reason to think that Lucifer was still around. No reason, as far as Dean could tell, for Lucifer to have even been around Rock Springs, Wyoming. Rock Springs might be a nice enough place but it was not in any way ticking any of Dean’s triggers. Sam would have found the library, plugged in the wifi and run through the history of the place but while Dean could and would do that, there were often things about a place that somebody could just feel.

            Lucifer had to be here for a reason. That reason could be looking for someone. Looking for some thing. Or trying to draw someone to him. Right now, with Amara on the loose, Dean figured humans were not particularly high on Luci’s stalking list. So who did he have a beef with/want? He was supposed to be going after Amara but he didn’t seem too concerned about that. Or maybe he was. It wasn’t like Dean knew the difference between Lucifer on a mission and Lucifer just…being Lucifer. Dean knew that on the occasions he had been incarcerated he’d had a specific list of things he wanted to do when he got out and the previous time Lucifer got out (because Sam let him out) (and now Sam had gotten himself cursed when Dean could really use some help) Luci had been too busy to pursue a bucket list, what with having the whole apocalypse to run. So maybe now he was doing whatever the Satanic equivalent of a good cheeseburger, a beer, and a hot lay would be.

            What would that be?

            Don’t even think about it.

            Thinking about it anyway led Dean to a bar, a dark and narrow place in a strip mall. It was one in the afternoon and there were two guys at the end of the bar, a space between them so it was clear they weren’t together. They were watching golf. Looking at them, Dean was pretty sure they weren’t exactly golf fans. Regulars. John Winchester used to call them bar glue. Said they held a bar together.

            Sheryl Crow was singing about how she liked a good beer buzz early in the morning. Dean ordered a Bud and hooked his heels on the crossbars of his bar stool. He’d spent a lot of time in bars alone. A bar was a place to be alone. A place not to worry about Sam for awhile. Or Amara or Lucifer. It was dark and it the juke box played music from any time between the 50’s to now. Patsy Cline sang about “Walking After Midnight” followed by some band singing about being a lonely boy. Dean didn’t know where he’d heard it before. ‘ _Oh oh-oh I gotta love that keeps me waiting,_ ’ he sang under his breath.

            Dean Winchester didn’t wait on anybody. Nobody to wait on.

            About his third beer he asked the bartender if there was a place to eat. Some place cheap.

            “You a contractor?” the bartender asked. He was a smooth-faced kid in his twenties.

            Dean didn’t know what he meant.

            “For the oil company. A lot of you guys come through here.”

            “Yeah,” Dean said.

            “I thought about getting some…” the guy behind the bar flickered his fingers, finding the words… “technical degree. Pays good, I bet.”

            “You’re on the road a lot,” Dean said, which was a pretty safe thing to say.

            “That’s why I don’t. My mom’s here and my dad and my dad’s family and my aunts. Family, you know?”

            “Yeah,” Dean said. “I know.”

            The guy wiped the bar down with a white bar towel even though it was spotless. Unlike the floor.

            “What’s here,” Dean said, “other than oil?”

            The kid laughed. “Nothing. Strip malls and check cashing places. Get out of town and you can buy a trailer for 5k and make meth.” The kid talked about high school and how he should have gone to college. Dean had heard this conversation in a thousand small towns.

            “Why’d people settle here in the first place?”

            “Coal,” said the kid. “You ever hear of the Rock Springs Massacre?”

            Dean sat up. “No. Gimme another Bud.”

#

            He walked the site of the original riot after dinner. Evening was coming on, lengthening the shadows but not softening the landscape. It was a wasteland of scrubbed land and dusty parking lots: Bronco Oilfield Service, Jack’s Truck & Equipment, and Kenworth Sales Rock Springs with humpbacked semi tractors standing in a line, bereft of their trailers.

            Behind the business the land ended abruptly at a shallow cliff and below it ran a winding narrow creek. The Rock Springs Massacre had disappeared into history. The Chinatown that stood here was completely gone; nothing of the houses and tents remained and the Chinese miners and their families long dead. Dean tried to picture it, to get a sense of the layout but the couple of things he’d found on the internet didn’t include much in the way of maps. Rioters had burned 79 homes here.

            The working conditions here were hard. Miners—Swedes , Irish, and Welsh—protested. So Union Pacific Coal brought in Chinese workers who could be paid less and who would stay on the job. 150 white miners (armed, ironically enough, with Winchester rifles) headed for Chinatown. More and more men joined the mob and they shot and killed Lor Sun Kit and then Leo Dye Bah and Yip Ah Marn. The Chinese ran in every direction; towards the mines and across Bitter Creek. A group of women stood on a plank bridge and watched, cheering like spectators at a sports event. Some forty or fifty people died and more were injured.

            Sixteen men were arrested. A grand jury released them. No one was ever found guilty or served time.

            In the dusk, a nightjar called _Tucuchillo, tucuchillo_ _. Dean listened to the bird. He had a feeling about this place but honestly, he couldn’t find anything to substantiate his sense and the bird calling was reassuring. When something was really fubar, birds and animals tended to go silent._

            “Dean Winchester.”

            Dean whirled, back to Bitter Creek.

            Lucifer smiled at him, contemptuous. Dean always felt as if Lucifer was playing a game of _fuck, marry, kill_ only without the ‘marry’. Castiel’s blue eyes were like sky; clear and clean. Seeing Lucifer in Cas was like knowing someone had peed in a pool. Dean couldn’t help but snarl a little.

            “What brings you here? Looking to buy a truck?” Lucifer cocked his head a little, spread his hands. “Tired of hunting? Looking for an honest way to make a living?”

            “Bird watching,” Dean said. “Wasn’t looking for rats.”

            “So rude,” Lucifer said. “Where’s your brother?”

            “None of your business,” Dean said.

            “Trouble in paradise? Again?”

            “What are you here for?” Dean said.

            “Sightseeing,” Lucifer said. “I’m a history buff, you know.”

            “You hate us, remember? We’re microbes.”

            “But so capable of atrocity. You’re a plague,” Lucifer said. “A nasty infection.” He said it almost as if it were a compliment. “Speaking of vermin, did you know that in parts of Africa they use Pouch Rats to detect mines? Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe.”

            “Random,” Dean said. He was hanging on to his rage by fingernails. His lizard brain was chanting _Lucifer Lucifer Lucifer_ the way you would yell ‘fire’ in a burning house.

            “It’s amazing. They can clear a field in twenty minutes. It would take humans hours to do the same thing.” The Morningstar looked out across the creek. “Useful vermin, when you’re looking for something.”

            With that he turned around and walked back towards the truck dealer parking lot, Cas’ trenchcoat swinging like a cape. He walked up to one of the truck cabs—a white one, of course—and snapped his fingers. The truck rumbled to life and the driver’s door opened. Lucifer swung easily up into the cab. He looked back and saluted Dean with a smirk, then closed the door and drove out the parking lot, turning east onto the road.

            Dean’s knees gave out and he sat down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been traveling and gotten behind on my writing and posting. I'll try to speed it up.
> 
> If you want to know more about the Hero Rats of Africa: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151006-giant-rats-landmines-cambodia-science-animals/


	13. Chapter 13

            Claire and Sam interviewed local police about the deaths at the church. That is, Sam introduced her as an intern and then Sam asked them questions. She reminded herself that he had passed as an FBI agent when he was only a couple of years older than she was but then again, watching him talk and ask questions, maybe it wasn’t so bad that she didn’t have to. He led them ever so gently to whatever was weird.

            The sheriff’s deputy, a black woman with a no nonsense attitude finally told them, “The weird thing…I mean, I’m a Christian woman, you know, so I can believe that there would be some hinky stuff going on when a bunch of people get murdered at a church. I can believe cults. Polygamy. Fathers having sex with their daughters. For some reason when it’s called church people can be stupid even though it’s all pretty clear, none of that falls under love thy neighbor. But people reported rumbling.”

            Sam nodded, serious. “Rumbling?”

            Really she had to remind herself that he was just some guy with too long hair and a bad rockabilly fashion sense.

            “Yeah,” the deputy said. “Rumbling. One woman said she heard something like thunder. So, you know, it’s a little out of season but okay. But she was a quarter of a mile from the church. There ain’t that many people out there. This guy who lived closer said it was an earthquake. Like thumping and things shook. Like giant footsteps or something. We don’t have earthquakes. Someone else thought it was a tornado, said it kinda sounded like a train. A big wind, they said.”

            Sam nodded like this wasn’t batshit crazy. Not that it was but Claire couldn’t think of what kind of thing would make a noise like that. “What do you think?” Sam asked her.

            “There’s these weird places in the ground, like something heavy hit it, just outside the church. But if there was something heavy, where is it now? There are no truck tracks, no vehicle tracks of any kind.” She shrugged. “You the Fed. You tell me.”

            Sam shrugged. “I wish I knew,” he said. He thanked her sincerely and they walked out to the car.

            “What is it?” Claire asked.

            “I don’t know,” Sam said.

            “Are there such things as giants?”

            Sam shook his head. “Trolls. But this doesn’t sound like a troll. They don’t go to a church and kill people. They wait for people to come to them.”

            Trolls. Good it wasn’t trolls. “Are trolls common?”

            “Dad hunted one. We never have,” Sam said.

            “What do we do now?” she asked.

            “We go back to the church and look around outside and then, research.”

            The area right around the church was well cared for but beyond that were trees. They circled the building a couple of times, moving farther and farther out each time. Claire found a place back by the trees. The ground fell away there and the branches of the trees hid the grass better.

            It looked like God’s own golf club had taken a divot out of the ground.

            “Sam?”

            He came and crouched.

            She wondered what he saw.

            He walked around the big divot, looked up at the trees, pointed. She came to stand next to him and didn’t see anything.

            “See all the broken branches?” he asked.

            Then she did. White split wood amidst the greenery.

            There were branches on the ground, now that she had looked, but they were kind of smashed up, like there had been a storm.

            “It came down that way, through the tree,” Sam said.

            “It’s big,” she said because she didn’t know what else to say.

            She expected Sam to look at her like she was a moron for stating the obvious but he just nodded, thoughtful. “Maybe it bounced,” he said. He walked into the underbrush and she scrambled after him in her stupid pencil skirt and old lady heels. Why were women expected to wear stupid clothes?

            “Careful!” Sam called over his shoulder. He stepped over and around things like it was nothing. She hated the woods. Had always hated the woods. She’d been camping twice and hated that, too. Things stuck to her skirt and her goddamned hose. The ground led down and she could see Sam looking, not at the ground but at the trees.

            She watched where she stepped. Usually when people went in the woods, didn’t they follow a path? There was no path here, just green shit. She wondered what poison ivy looked like. Something about three leaves. She wondered if she was one of the people who tended to get it.

            Sam slowed down, squinting, then pointed. “Maybe over there?”

            She was breathing hard. Sam, the fucker, looked like he was standing in someone’s living room or something. He took off in the direction he pointed and she scrambled after him. It was a slope leading down to a creek and she had to grab saplings to stay upright.  

            The divot here was deeper, the ground softer. Sam crouched and touched the dirt, rubbed it between his fingers and smelled it. She smelled it, too. It smelled like dirt.

            “I don’t smell sulfur,” Sam said.

            “Me neither.”

            Sam straightened up and dusted his hands on his pants. Then he took a photo with his phone.

            “What do you think?” she asked.

            He shrugged. “Meteorites?”

            “Supernatural meteorites?”

            “Never heard of them before. There’s nothing left behind.”

            “Seven league boots,” she said.

            He frowned but in a way that said he was thinking. Then he nodded. “Possible. Witches then.”

            “Wait, there are seven league boots?” she asked.

            “Not that I know of, but witches do all sorts of weird shit so who knows.” He held out his hand. “Lets get to the road, it’ll be easier to walk back.”

            Which meant that he’d noticed she was incompetent. She grabbed his hand and he pulled her up. His hand was warm and huge.

            She glanced up and saw something, a long thread. "Hey," she said. Sam reached up and grabbed it where it was snagged. He took some time to unsnag it and then followed it, carefully pulling it off brush. It was like ten feet long, maybe longer, and black.

            "Good eye," he said and she told herself she didn't care what he thought but she did. She was relieved when he took her hand again and helped her up the hill.

            He was a big dork, she reminded herself. She’d seen him eating with his mouth open. She’d seen him hit his head on their stupid car.

            At the top of the hill he stepped over the guard rail by the road and all but lifted her over. She was missed his hand when he let go.

#

            Back at the hotel Sam got them two rooms which was a relief. Claire looked up seven league boots and found out that they were in a ton of video games and travel blogs. Wading through that took forever. He knocked on her door after about half an hour, his hair damp from a shower, and plopped into a chair. He put the long thread down on the desk. It looked like a tangle of hair.

            “Find anything?” he asked.

            “Not unless you count the Marvel database,” she said.

            “If there are witches, there will be other ways to look,” he said. “Don’t follow your hunch until you get more evidence.”

            “What do you mean?”

            He explained that the best thing to do was look at local crimes and weather patterns. See if something like this has happened before or if there are other unexpected things going on—people disappearing every seven years or someone winning the lottery twice.

            She felt like she should offer him the desk but he seemed fine in the one comfortable chair.

            Research was hard. And boring. She looked up the local paper online but there was only a website. She googled Waupaca, Wisconsin news. Everything just led to really boring, uninformative websites. After an hour she took a kind of break and read the Marvel database entry on seven league boots. It wasn’t helpful.

            “You want a pop?” she asked.

            “I think I’ve got something,” he said. “Get this, there’s a new development at Chain O’ Lakes-King.”

            “What?” she said. “Is that a restaurant?”

            He shook his head and turned his laptop around so she could see Google Maps. “It’s a place. The contractor just got a hefty fine for failing to report the discovery of artifacts. Native American stuff. Around here that would probably be Potowatomi. They were part of the Eastern Algonquin.”

            “Okay,” she said. “So, _Poltergeist_?”

            He looked confused.

            “The movie. Indian burial grounds, little girl sucked into the TV?”

            He rolled his eyes. “That movie is garbage. It wasn’t even a poltergeist, just your every day average haunting.”

            “What are you talking about?” she asked.

            “The curse of the movie. Amityville, Bobby said that was a real mess. Dean was obsessed with it for years, always getting Bobby to tell about how he and Rufus shut the Amityville place down.”

            “Amityville was real?” she asked.

            “Yeah, but it didn’t happen to the family that wrote the book and it was nothing like that. Anyway, if this is something to do with the Potowatomi that could be really bad. I don’t know jack shit about what could have been raised.”

            “So you research, right?” she asked.

            “The pandemic and genocide that destroyed most of the indigenous peoples of America meant that a lot of the people who knew shit died without being to pass it on. A lot of tribes didn’t have a written language. There are people trying to put it all back together but there are things out there no one knows what to do about. Remember that the Ojibwa were as different from the Hopi as the Swedes are from the Italians.   They have different traditions, different spirits.”

            “Oh.” She blinked. “So do you run into a lot of…Native American stuff?”

            He shook his head. “The occasional wendigo and skinwalker. The Navajo and the Hopi take care of their own and the Hopi take care of Anasazi stuff. Nasty stuff.”

            “I’ve never heard of the Anasazi,” she said.

            “Cliff dwellers. Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.”

            She’d seen pictures of cliff dweller places. “I’ve heard of that.”

            “You don’t live high up on a cliff unless you’re really afraid of something. A hundred feet up the side of sheer rock is not a great place to raise toddlers or take care of old people. Apparently there was some spirit war going on between the Aztecs and the Anasazi. Google Chaco Canyon and human feces and hearth. If we run across something like that there’s a woman we call at Taos Pueblo. Then they do whatever. They don’t talk to white people about it.”

            “So who do you call about this?”

            “I don’t know anyone. At one time I would have called Bobby and he might have known someone.” He bent back over the laptop.

            Her stomach rumbled. She wasn’t going to say anything but they hadn’t eaten since breakfast—she would get a snack out of a vending machine. But his head came up.   “Oh, man, Claire, are you hungry? You should have said something. Jody is going to skin me alive if she finds out I’ve been starving you.”

            They ended up at the Chain ‘O Lakes Bar and Grill. Sam told her to get what she liked. “They’ve got steak,” he said. “And ribs. Dean loves—” he stopped himself.

            “Jesus, dude. It’s not like he’s dead, you can say his name,” she said.

            “If I do that thing,” he said, “tell people I have petit mal seizures. Just say I’ll be okay.”

            Oh right. Sam going blank here was going to take explaining.

            They didn’t have much to say to each other after that. Sam got the Caesar salad and she got a Mac n’ Cheese pizza. It was not as good as it sounded.

#

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a lot of interesting research about Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi. 
> 
> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlrtbq3KPOAhXByoMKHSBbD3AQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unl.edu%2Frhames%2Fcourses%2Fcurrent%2Freadings%2FCannibals.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEfyl48Tl-CVoS5p5Ysc4JcUD76UA&sig2=7XcOHZp61FxKb5t2KUyshA


	14. Chapter 14

            Lucifer was sticking around here for a reason and Dean doubted it was the night life. That the archangel had met him at the site of the Chinatown Mining Massacre probably wasn’t a coincidence, either.

            (He kept thinking about how it was Cas but not Cas. Was Cas going through the things Sam had gone through? Sam didn’t talk much about it but the fact that he’d rather die than be possessed again—not the time to think about it, Winchester. Mind of the hunt. The more he could know about Lucifer, the better chance he had of throwing him out of Cas.)

            The librarian who helped him was, coincidentally enough, Chinese-American. She was young and had the slightest of accents. Her name was Lynn. “Lynn. L Y N N because my Chinese name is Yi Lin Wu and my father has no imagination. Not many people ask about this,” she said. “Just people who are doing research papers in high school.”

            Dean smiled. “I’m kind of a history buff,” he said. “Have you got any maps from the time?”

            “Maps?” she said, “Wow, I don’t know. I bet there are mining maps. We wouldn’t have them here but they’d have them in records down in City Hall.” She reminded him of Charlie. He was tempted to ask her who her favorite character was in Lord of the Rings. “We used to have a little display of coins and stuff. I bet it’s boxed up somewhere.” She stood thinking with her index finger on her lip. She was so cute Dean sort of wanted to hit on her. Except it felt a little like hitting on a kid. Or Charlie which would be like hitting on your sister.

            She took him back to the storeroom. “I can never reach anything but you’re tall,” she said.

            “You want to see tall, you should see my brother,” Dean said. It was nice to recognized as tall. He was tall. Just no one ever noticed when Sam was around. He grabbed a box like the kind copier paper came in and hauled it down for her.

            She unwrapped a display of Chinese coins. They all had square holes in the middle. “Qing Dynasty,” she said. “And here.” It was a white and blue bowl, broken in three pieces. Two more pieces of pottery that had been burned black by fire. There was a pair of old leather shoes and a couple of mah jong pieces.

            “Who collected this stuff?” Dean asked.

            “Talia. She owns a shop. I only work until two today, you want me to introduce you?”

#         

            The shop was one of those crowded, dusty second-hand places filled with dresses and mismatched plates, cheap glassware, and really ugly pictures. It had a couple of fur coats and a surprising amount of taxidermy; several deer head, a pheasant, a rather mangy looking badger...

            Dean kind of liked the taxidermy.

            A very tall woman with a broad face—plain and not pretty at all—asked him, “Do you hunt?”

            “Yeah,” he said. “I do.” He was admiring a turkey mounted with it’s tail on display. The woman was a little like the turkey. She might have been plain in the face but she had a lot of plumage—she was wearing a brocade dress and thick heeled, bright green sandals. She had bright green glasses and emerald nails.

            “I know it’s not politically correct,” the woman said, “but you know a lot of people who disapprove of hunting have no problem eating hamburgers at McDonalds. They just don’t want to think about the killing behind their food.”

            Dean liked her. “You got it,” he said.

            “Talia!” Lynn said. “Hi Dean! Sorry I’m late.” She was clutching a take-out coffee.

            “No drinks in the store,” Talia said.

            Lynn backed out onto the sidewalk and drank her coffee down in long gulps then came in and handed the empty cup to Talia who threw it away. “This is Dean. He’s interested in Chinatown and the Rock Springs Massacre.”

            “A hunter and a history buff,” Talia said.

            “Anyone else ask you recently about the Massacre?” Dean ask. “A guy wearing a suit and a trench coat? Dark hair?”

            Talia thought a moment. “No,” she said. “I don’t get many guys in the shop.”

            “Show him your Chinatown stuff,” Lynn said. Outside of the library she was younger.

            “He seemed more interested in that,” Talia pointed to the big mounted gobbler.

            “Ewww,” Lynn said.

            Talia and Dean shared a look. “She is vegetarian,” Talia confided.

            “I’m sorry for your loss,” Dean said. “My brother is a salad kind of guy. He’s also a book kind of guy.” Sam and Lynn would probably bond or something. No, Sam would do the sympathetic but distant thing—he kept everybody but Dean and Jody at arm’s length.

            Talia went into the back room and Lynn looked around. “I love this place,” she confided. “I mean, I am a thrower-outer myself.”

            Dean didn’t understand.

            “There’s two type of people, you know? Thrower-outers and keep everything’s. When I get frustrated, I just throw stuff out. Talia keeps everything. What are you?”

            Dean was pretty sure what the answer to that was. He didn’t have a lot of choice. He’d spent a lifetime living by the rule that if it didn’t fit in a duffle or on his back, he didn’t keep it. “Thrower-outer,” he said. “But I had an uncle who was a keep everything. He loved books. And cars. Had a scrap yard.” He missed Bobby.

            Talia came back out with a deep tray. “When people find stuff they bring it to me. If it’s worth anything, I usually turn it over to the library or the city.”

            She plunked the tray down. It was full of blackened pot shards. He picked up one and tried to pretend he could understand why anybody would care.

            “Careful,” she said. “They can be crumbly.” She rooted through them, piling them to one side. She pulled out an iron ladle and then a little blackened curly-cue. “Drawer-pull,” she said.

            Dean picked up the drawer pull. Now that she said what it was he could see what it was. It made him a little sad. Funny. He was around ghosts and houses and dead things all the time and he didn’t care and here he was feeling bad over a handle.

            “Show him the necklace,” Lynn urged.

            Talia gave her a hard look.

            Necklace. That sounded promising. He put down the drawer pull.

            Talia went behind the counter and pulled out a wooden box. She opened it up and inside, all curled up in a heap were green and red stone beads and a thick pendant.

            “Do you mind?” Dean asked. He reached into the box and pulled it out. The beads felt warm against his fingers—not a good sign. The pendant was blood red and teardrop shaped. Something was carved in it.

            “It’s probably jade,” Talia said.

            “Do you know what it says?” Dean asked.

            “It says it collects chi,” said a voice from the door.

            Dean whirled around.

            Lucifer-in-Cas smiled at him. “So nice of you to find it so quickly.” He leaned against the door frame in Cas' dreadful old trench coat.  Cas' tie matched his eyes.

            “Lynn, Talia, is there a back door?” Dean said. “Get out of here.”

            “Who—” Talia asked.  She clearly couldn't speak, couldn't move.  It would have been comical if it wasn't so frightening.

            Dean wanted to launch himself towards the archangel but he couldn’t move anything but his eyes. Lucifer walked up to him and took the necklace out of his hand.

            “Where’s Sam?” Lucifer asked. “You know I don’t need him but I do miss him. This is durable and all,” he looked down at the body he wore. “But it’s kind of OshKosh. Sam was Armani, if you know what I mean.” He stepped too close to Dean, into Dean’s space. He tilted his head ever so slightly and smiled. “Why isn’t he here?”

            Dean found he could speak. “He usually avoids dicks with wings.”

            “I’m about the only one with wings, thanks to Castiel,” Lucifer crooned. “But wait, that’s not really why he isn’t here, is it, Dean-o. Little brother’s busted his noggin again, hasn’t he? You know, last time I saw him, he was all ready to sacrifice his soul to power up Castiel and get you back from the past.” He reached out and put his fingertips on Dean’s chest. They were icy cold, five precise touches. “Some times I think your brother has a taste for pain.  Do you want to feel what he offered to let Cas do? What I did to him?”

            No one had ever touched Dean’s soul but he’d seen when Sam’s was touched.

            “I told him I was going to splatter him all over the bunker for you to find when you came back. You can imagine he was not so thrilled with that idea.”

            Dean hadn’t known but it was hard to think about that when Lucifer/Cas’ fingers slid into his chest. He tensed, trying to brace himself for—what? Then the pain he felt was not like anything he’d ever felt before. He saw white. It was intense but he’d been to hell. This was…intimate. It was his soul. 

            ...

            “Dean,” said Lucifer. “Dean!”

            ...

            Not Lucifer.

            Cas.

            “I’m sorry,” Cas said.  That was wrong, Dean should be the one who was sorry.  Although he was needing a moment to get it together.  He couldn’t breathe. Thinking of Sam, of pain, of centuries of that. Looking at Cas.

            “Go!” Cas said. His face, his very familiar eyes. So blue, so different from Lucifer.

            Dean was on his knees. He grabbed the glass counter and hauled himself to his feet. He took the necklace from Cas’ fingers. Nothing hurt except his tongue which he must have bitten (everything hurt in some way he couldn’t describe). He grabbed Lynn’s hand and said, “Come on,” hoarsely to Talia and dragged them out the door past Castiel.

            He stopped outside and dropped the pendant on the sidewalk. He brought his heel down on it as hard as he could. The stone cracked. Two more hard stomps and it was cracked fragments.

            Talia made a hurt noise, but just clenched her hands. They ran to the Impala.


End file.
